In today’s Quick Hits we talk about some cybersafety issues, new research from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and why you should never complain about customers on Facebook.

–

MySpace Making Comeback as Anti-Facebook?

Could MySpace be making a comeback? Recently, MySpace announced plans to make its website more private, offering an alternative to the more open Facebook. In response to MySpace’s maneuvering, a Facebook spokesperson told CNN “We’re listening to feedback and evaluating the best way to respond to concerns. We understand that maintaining people’s privacy is of paramount importance, not just to them but to the eco-system of the Internet as a whole and we welcome innovative ideas in this space.” Will those innovative ideas be coming from one of Facebook’s long-dormant competitors?

Facebook Hit With Huge Adware Attack

This past weekend, hundreds of thousands of Facebook users found their PCs infected by adware after clicking on a link promising the “sexiest video ever.” The adware attack, which Facebook disabled within 15 hours, still managed to infect a huge number of users. Roger Thompson, the chief research officer at AVG Technologies, attributed the fast spread of the attack to the “viral nature” of social networking.

“Facebook is very responsive to threats when we identify them, and removing these applications as soon as they find them, but they’re still able to generate huge traffic, just because of the viral nature of social networks. It is staggering how many threats were propagated before they were stopped.”

Charlotte Waitress Fired After Complaining About Customers on Facebook

After being forced to stay an hour past closing by a couple who spent three hours at dinner, a Charlotte waitress was annoyed to receive a $5 tip. Rather than suffer in silence, she went on Facebook to complain about the customers. Unfortunately, she didn’t know her bosses were watching. When they saw the post, they fired her from her job.

Anyone who has worked in the food service industry knows how frustrating the job can be. Still, if you get a lousy tip or a bad customer, the first thing you do should not be to complain about them on Facebook. Your fellow servers might understand, but management most certainly will not.

Twitter Deals With Wide-Spread Phishing Scam

While Facebook was being hit with an adware attack, Twitter was dealing with its own cybercrime problems. According to USA Today, Twitter has been combatting a widespread phishing attack on the website, which tricks users into giving up their log-in credentials for the promise of “more Twitter followers.” Once a scammer has control of an account, they can use it to promote spam links or direct users to other malicious websites.

Here are a few of the phrases to watch out for:

FREE MORE TWITTER FOLLOWERS!

CHECK out this site, im a member of it, gets you more followers.

WANT MORE TWITTER FOLLOWERS?

Get more followers for free!

EFF Shows How 84% of Browsers Can Be Fingerprinted With Basic Data

In a stunning report, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has discovered that “the overwhelming majority of Internet users could be uniquely fingerprinted and tracked using only the configuration and version information that their browsers make available to websites.” Studying over 500,000 browsers, the EFF was able to determine that 84% had unique configurations. When a browser used Flash or Java, that number grew to 94%.

Given how little information it took the EFF to identify these unique fingerprints, it is guaranteed that someone with even more data (cookies, IP addresses, etc.) could put together a incredibly accurate user profile.