Inside FarmVille's Sinister Underbelly

azspot via csoonline:

The sad fact is that these applications are susceptible to malware pushers and those looking to steal your personal information. It’s not much of a stretch for hackers to impersonate people you think are trusted, fellow players, as is the case with a lot of online gaming. And the more you expose yourself, the bigger the target you become.

I saw the Social Zombies talk at DEFCON 17 (which was awesome) and decided to put real effort into educating my friends, family, and strangers in bars about how insidious Facebook apps are/can be. I assumed they already knew, but HEY, it turns out that’s not the case. It’s frustrating to spend an hour crafting a simple, clear email to everyone including Tom Eston’s Facebook Privacy recommendations PDF flier (which he should update for the new FB privacy schema *cough cough*) and not get back a single comment, response, or thank you. Someone (not me) needs to make a catchy video explaining this stuff and get people’s attention. I’ll keep trying, but man, it’s a tough sell.  </endrant>

Sidenote: My twitter feed is currently 50% people bitching about the Superbowl and 50% people bitching about the snow at Shmoocon. That is all.