myspace.com is safe.

[paul]

How safe is myspace.com site ? it is limited safe as long as you dont open any attatchments?

[tomsr]

You can't receive attachments through myspace. There are some sex sites that try and ruin the site, but you just ignore those links. It is very safe, I've been a member for three months and no problems.

[kev woodman]

There is a way in which mySpace can be used to pass adware. You can read about it here: techcrunch.com/2006/07/10/zango-brings-adware-to-myspace/

But it depends what you mean by safe. Technically it seems pretty safe at the moment although the site itself was recently taken down by a 'Web 2.0 virus' but that doesn't mean that it's necessarily safe for kids to use without some form of supervision. Or that the personal data you supply is safe in the hands of News Corp.

[media-slave.co.uk]

We have an article up about mySpace:
game-slave.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=55

Its not as indepth as can be but I think the answer to the original question is no where on the internet is safe thanks to teenage punks pretending to be NEO.

[kev woodman]

...from a design point of view most of the pages could probably fall under that heading .

The problem of predatory adults exploiting mySpace is interesting, but I'm not sure if this is a real issue or just the cause du jour for US politicians because of some high profile cases over there.

It's probably true though that any site which encourages social networking is 'unsafe' to some degree. I don't have a problem with my daughter using mySpace but I like to think that I've educated her about the possible dangers (although experience tells me that she probably just thinks I'm being a miserable old fart).

[media-slave.co.uk]

Spot on, parents have alot of work nowadays to ensure their kids safety without disallowing everything.

I also agree with what you say about these cases maybe just being so high profile at the moment and the risk might not actually be that high. But, concidering that i just got blessed with a daughter I would not like to take the risk. As always it seems education is key.

[tomsr]

I don't think the original quesiton was about the ethics of myspace was it?! Anyway, as with all community websites, myspace can be exploited. They are now taking the steps to stop this exploitation happening by adults needing to know an underage persons surname before they can communicate with each other. In terms of why I use it, it is a fantastic resource to let local people know about my upcoming gigs.

[kev woodman]

No the original question asked whether mySpace was safe. Safety is a much broader topic than 'am I likely to get a virus' and that is what we have been discussing.

I know that mySpace have introduced some new safeguards for minors, but the fact remains that, until there is a reliable way to ensure that the person claiming to be 15 years old actually is that age, then there are dangers for young people.

This isn't a particular problem for mySpace and is largely the usual FUD (as previously stated) but it's definitely relevant to the question of whether mySpace is 'safe'.

[paul]

I am actually scared after reading these news;:eek:
wired.com/news/wireservice/0,70501-0.html?tw=wn_culture_4
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5101942.stm

[kev woodman]

I hadn't seen that news story about the party. 'There was blood in almost every room of the house...' nice.

Mind you given the age of Rupert Murdoch's latest wife perhaps he's bought MySpace as a kind of recruitment service

[scream]

as some people have already hinted/said on here. Safety is a broad question, personally i would say there are several things that you can look. There's the technical side, and the social engineering side.

As it's already been reported, people have used the community site to launch social engineering attacks. Attacks that are nothing other than life threatening, and disgraceful. However like with all things knowledge is the key to being safe. It is so much easier to be more open with people you don't know through the Internet because you're talking through a computer, and not seein someone face to face. Just remember that whenever you're talking to someone.

My personal view is that myspace could be a social engineers dream. As for the tech side, well i would say depending on they're running and the software itself.

Because of my job i use this wesbite all the time to look for known issues with hardware and software. But it's also a good place to see what's happening in the security world.

http://www.securityfocus.com

On the first page i already saw a article on myspace. This article goes into greater detail than what i've been talking about.

http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/408


Social security and social engineering is a very valuable/dangerious thing. The only way to stop such things from happening is knowledge.

[paul]

I think In the case of social engineering it is no security at all. It is hard to obscure the fact that humans use the system and that can be influenced by some of the people, any person can start lossing control over their mind as the mind start looking for shortcut bypassing the simple common scence and logical argument.

[scream]

Don't mean to be slow here, but i didn't get what you said at all there. Are you saying that you can't have security when it comes to social engeering, or that social engineering isn't part of security?

[paul]

The second one, as far as social engineering concentrate the weakest link of computer, security chain it is not secured.

[scream]

well i would have to disagree. If social engineering wasn't anything to do with security, then it wouldn't be covered in security topics. As i've mentioned, the key to stop such attacks, is knowledge. It's having a policy that users keep too and having checks every so often to see if such policies are working.

The fact that the very nature of social engineering is used to break into systems, clear puts it within the security topic for a security person. Speaking from experience. Whenever i've done penetration tests i've used social engineering to gain access to their network. From this i would then tell the client how such attacks can be prevented.