Security Professionals On LinkedIn Stalked By Fake Recruiters

Several security professionals who are active on LinkedIn, have been the target of fake recruiters who probably tried to map the social circle and connections. The Dutch security researcher Yonathan Klijnsma warned two weeks ago for the 'recruiters'.

Also employees of the Finnish anti-virus firm F-Secure were approached by the fake accounts, which utilized under different from stock photos. The "recruiters" were mainly as employees of Talent Sources and approached security professionals through a standard message from a recruiter. What was the real purpose is unknown. Possibly this was an experiment to test how sensitive security professionals for social engineering. The accounts of the 'recruiters' appeared after some time to disappear. Still, warns Sean Sullivan from the F-Secure it is hoped that no one has given the fake accounts important information.

Research: 8% Instagram Accounts Is A Spambot

Almost one in twelve accounts on Instagram photo service is specially created to send only spam messages. It claims a group of Italian researchers, more than 10.2 million accounts were monitoring the website. In addition to analyzing the accounts of celebrities she also bought 20,000 fake accounts from ten different providers for an amount of one hundred dollars and kept in the hole for a month.

The study showed that 7.9% of Instagram accounts behaves like spambot. It also showed that nearly 30% of users are inactive and places less than one photo or video per month. In December last year decided to tackle spam bots Instagram, but the problem seems to be still present. "Despite the cleaning of last December and new" countermeasures "to stop this development, there is still a lack of transparency about internal data, there are few studies on the presence of spambots, especially on Instagram," the researchers said.

In their study called "Instagram spam bots and social media Popularity" they say that Instagram, now everyone on the platform to advertise, to take measures to create a level playing field for everyone and should show more respect for users of social media platforms. Instagram claims to have over 300 million users .

Spammer Uses 750,000 Twitter Accounts For Slimming

One of the spammers have created over a period of one year 750,000 Twitter accounts and used for an extensive spam operation involving slimming based on green coffee beans were offered. To convince potential customers that the pills were legitimately used the spammer kinds Twitter accounts resembling the accounts of famous brands and celebrities, such as CNN, TMZ and MTV.

Spammers also used the Twitter accounts to real Twitterers to send these fake accounts, as reported anti-virus company Symantec. The virus fighter managed to unmask the spammer because that left some traces of his identity. For spam operation used the spammer three types of accounts. Namely new accounts that had no followers, no tweets sent out and used the standard "egg" icon. Symantec calls these accounts "eggs".

There were also accounts stolen content and tweeted photos of real women used. These accounts were followed by both the "eggs" as real users. Finally there were the "mockingbirds" accounts that occurred as the accounts of famous brands and celebrities and slimming advertised. Through the mockingbirds and parrots the spammer trying to spread the tweets about the diet pills among many people. For anyone who purchased the diet pills eventually the spammer got a fee ranging from 36 to 60 dollars.

The spammer could eventually become obsolete because he made some mistakes. So he left traces in the domains he registered and he used one of his "parrot Accounts" as a personal Twitter account. He also used some parrot accounts to retweet personal tweets.

Paying Attention

Symantec warns Twitterers to check that accounts they follow are real, identifiable by the blue tick. In addition, users of the micro blogging service wary of new followers and wants the number of followers on Twitter that someone does not say anything. "Numbers can lie," said the virus fighter. Finally follows the advice that no miracle pills exist to lose weight.