The only scary tweets were in Hitchcock's "The Birds"

January 11, 2010 8:28 AM

Where can I find accurate and qualitative data about risks of using social networking tools?

As the person on my team who seems to be the most in tune with social networks...my boss has asked me to prepare a CEO-level (2 page overview) presentation about "the risks of social networking". Basically my boss is asking me to represent that social networking is inherently risky (spyware,etc) and that we should recommend a policy restricting/forbidding its use.

Even though I don't personally agree with that,..I'd like to set all opinions aside and just focus on actual facts -- but I'm finding it difficult to actually find any. (I'm finding tons of "fluff" news articles warning against "ZOMG teh dangers of Facebook",etc).. but no real hard reliable statistics. For example: I'd like to find statistics on how many end-user infections come from social networking sites... but I'm beginning to think finding that is going to be near impossible.

I did find a recent article by SANS.org citing the top security risks to end-users are: Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Flash, Quicktime, Java and Microsoft Office. .... and they are a reputable source, but that assessment applies to ANY website, not just social networking.

I'm starting to create a draft document... breaking up the social networking issue (as it applies to our business) into 2 important angles: 1.) the software security angle (make sure our environment is doing its best to maintain current patches on Adobe, Flash, Java, Quicktime,etc.) and 2.) Make sure our "acceptable use policy" is updated to include/cover things like "wasting work time on non-business related websites" and "not posting company information to public/social websites" etc...

Does that seem like a sensible approach?.... have there been any studies done that show social networking sites are predominantly more risky than other websites? (without regard to age of userbase) ... ?

posted by jmnugent to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

Check threat portals published by security software companies. AVG in particular has emphasised social networking in some of its past content.
posted by bifter at 11:18 AM on January 11, 2010

Do you have access to a university library? They probably have access to studies that might have some data.
posted by pecknpah at 11:29 AM on January 11, 2010

I did a quick search for various keywords in my school library's database, but it just brought up articles warning about how kids are putting so much private info online, so that's not very helpful.

If you want to suggest other keywords, I could look more.
posted by pecknpah at 11:34 AM on January 11, 2010

Response by poster: Bifter:... I have been searching/surfing various threat portals... but the results I keep seeing always point back to specific exploits (Flash/Java/Silverlight,etc) and those exploits could come from ANY website... (not exclusive to social networking websites)

pecknpah:... as far as I know, I do not have access to a university library. (I don't even own a library card to any library, actually... people still use those? :P

> "but it just brought up articles warning about how kids are putting so much private info online, so that's not very helpful."

Right.. and paranoia type articles like that are about all I'm finding. I'm not sure what other keywords to suggest. (thats part of why this is frustrating me so much). Honestly I'm not even sure better keywords would make a difference -- because I'm inclined to believe the statistics I'm looking for don't exist. Sites like Facebook wouldn't want those statistics to get out.. and the virus/spyware scene changes so quickly, the statistics (IE: which domain/URL is most "risky") would be useless rather quickly.

Or so thats the impression I get... but I'll keep searching.
posted by jmnugent at 11:52 AM on January 11, 2010

I found some with surveys. One says that " 83 percent of adults social networking are downloading unknown files from other people's profiles potentially opening up their PCs to attacks." I can send you the source if you want. I'm sure you found statistics like that elsewhere though. I also found a source from 2006 analyzing malware in IM and P2P file sharing. If that's helpful I can send that to you too.

I think you're correct that Facebook, etc., don't want people to know whether social networking is more dangerous than the rest of the web. Sorry!
posted by pecknpah at 1:10 PM on January 11, 2010

Heres' a blog post from a social media monitoring company from yesterday, seems to contain a couple of relevant citations.
posted by bifter at 1:35 AM on January 15, 2010