Koobface Virus
One of the most dangerous virus to hit social networks, like MySpace or Facebook, is named Koobface. According to the online website Kaspersky, this virus has grown to over 1000 versions. This worm first appeared in 2008. That year it was identified by experts and it was very popular because of its way to spread using people’s accounts on both Facebook and MySpace. The first thing this worm will do is to send some messages to your contacts. Those messages will contain links that if your friends do click on them, they will be redirected to sites similar to Youtube where they will be asked to install a new Flash Player version to be able to see any video. Instead of installing the plug-in, the users install a version of Koobface, which will start forwarding the message to other accounts. The following website Koobface Removal has good infos about how to remove Koobface.
More social networks have been affected by this worm: Twitter, Hi5, Bebo. We can say that Koobface is becoming more dangerous day after day. The first step to efficiently protect yourself from problems like Koobface is to double check any links you will receive in any messages sent to you, even those from your friends. On a site like Facebook (with like 225 millions users), one can expect that there are people infected with Koobface, connected to that social network and not even knowing they are spreading the worm around. More and more people are registering to sites like Facebook. That’s why such social networks will remain a target for criminals trying to hurt your computer. Check here Remove Virus to learn more about virus removal.
Any social networks user should do the following if they want to avoid problems like Koobface:
- when using such a social network, be aware when clicking on links, no matter if they were sent from friends or not;
- to protect yourself better against Koobface and similar worms, use IE7 in Protected Mode. You can also use Firefox with NoScript installed;
- anyone using a network like Facebook should not display his/her phone number and residence publicly. Only put minimal infos about you and your family.
Those are just a few tips to help you get a better protection against worms like Koobface.
