Impact of Facebook on Social Network Security

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Journal of Computing, ISSN 2151-9617, http://www.journalofcomputing.org

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JOURNAL OF COMPUTING, VOLUME 3, ISSUE 7, JULY 2011, ISSN 2151-9617 HTTPS://SITES.GOOGLE.COM/SITE/JOURNALOFCOMPUTING/ WWW.JOURNALOFCOMPUTING.ORG

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Impact of Facebook on Social Network Security
Pradeep Kumar Puram and Aditya Krishna Haas Rayaprolu
Abstract—Facebook has become an important part of the average netizen's daily routine. In fact is is now deeply knit within the social fabric of our society. This applies to almost all the countries acorss the world, in which Facebook has made its presence felt. This paper attempts to examine some of the risks assoiciated with Facebook and how it impacts the concept of social network security. The paper gives an overview about the policies of Facebook and how they are affecting the usage of the website by millions of people around the world. The paper also attempts to take a glimpse into the future of the social networking behemoth and how it would impact the social scene.

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• Pradeep Kumar Puram is with Vivekananda Institute of Technology and Science, Karimnagar, India. • Aditya Krishna Haas Rayaprolu is a student at Vivekananda Institute of Technology and Science, Karimnagar, India. Index Terms—Authentication,Internet Security Policies,Privacy,Professional Ethics

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1 INTRODUCTION The World-Wide-Web, popularly referred to as www, was first introduced to the world at large on the sixth of August, 1991. [1] Ever since then, the world has never been the same again. Thanks to the success of the WorldWide-Web, the Internet began to spread its wings over the world and brought together people from various countries, enabling them to connect with each other. Wait a minute, that wasn’t how it started out; the Internet started out merely as a means for people to kill some time when they were bored. It was merely expensive entertainment. There were times when users in the US had to pay $1 for each kilobyte of bandwidth that they consumed. As for the rest of the world, they had no access to such facilities, and were blissfully ignorant about the possibilities of the Internet. Fast-forward around two decades and the situation has changed. There are more than 1.9 billion people around the world using the Internet [2], and it has now evolved from merely being a medium to kill time or being used as a global pornography database. The Internet has certainly come far, and its success can be attributed to a single word –networking. The Internet is now available everywhere, and can be found on computers, laptops, mobile phones, kiosks and even in the most unimaginable places. This has helped people to be online from any part of the world, and a large chunk of these people have been pursuing a single, common activity, and that is networking with one another. The Internet has managed to forge new relations and bring back old ones to life, thanks to its ability in connecting people from all over the world. It started out in the form of Internet Relay Chat (IRC) Channels, and soon blossomed in the form of social networking sites, which claim a lion’s share in today’s Internet traffic. All this is well and good, but this concept of networking is going too far. Internet giants, who have raised billions of dollars in revenue by running social networking services, are encouraging people to put more of their personal information online, so that they can have a better experience in networking with their friends. This paper aims to take a look at the current trends of networking, and what the future has in store for us in this regard. The dangers of an increasingly networked world are slowly becoming evident, and it’s time that the world woke up to face the harsh reality, and stop living in an online fantasy. Social networking sites are the biggest culprits, as they encourage millions of people all around the world to spill the beans upon themselves, and put every small update about their lives on the Internet. 2 THE PAST

The last two decades have seen how the Internet took a stronghold over the world, and how companies like Google and Yahoo rose to dizzying heights, riding solely on the power of the Internet. People began finding new uses for the Internet every single day. However, there was one idea which revolutionized the whole world, and that was the concept of using the Internet to help people connect with their friends, and with the world at large. The earliest form of networking came in the form of Internet Relay Chat (IRC) Channels, which were quite a rage for the early adopters of the Internet. Coupled with the spread of message boards, these channels soon began to bring people from all over the world together, and enabled them to share their views on various topics, including their likes and dislikes. After that, it was the turn of the electronic mail, lazily referred to as e-mail, which allowed users to send

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private messages to their contacts. E-mail service providers such as AOL and Hotmail soon brought forward the concept of Instant Messages (IM), which were similar to IRC Channels, but were more secure and private. By this time, users were beginning to realise the benefits of being connected. Online communities such as Tripod, Geocities and Classmates began to gain a large influx of users who wanted to connect with other people sharing common interests and ideas. [3] However, the first major idea that showed the world the true potential of networking was Friendster, arguably the first popular social networking site in the world. Friendster launched in 1999, and soon began garnering huge success, thanks largely to the various networking options that it offered its users. Members could connect with other people and share information and pictures with them, and just stay in touch. Friendster soon inspired the rise of many other social networking sites. MySpace, which followed Friendster, soon became not only the most popular social networking site, but also the most visited website on the Internet, at the peak of its popularity. However, there was another small start-up which entered the game at a much later time, but soon managed to eat up the competition and overtook MySpace to become the most popular social networking site in the world. That start-up was called Facebook. Facebook’s success goes to show that people are not hesitant in putting up their private information on the Internet for everyone to see. People are eager for the world to see them, recognise them, acknowledge their achievements, share their grieves and be a part of their lives at every moment. This is the sole concept that has been driving the Internet forward and this is the reason why the world is becoming dependent on networking for almost every single thing that it does. That was the story of what happened till now. But there’s another story brewing in the pot, and that is the story of what this concept of networking has in store for the world in the future. The Internet is evolving. Unlike the evolution of man, which takes millions of years for any significant change, the evolution of the Internet is taking place at such a rapid pace that it is becoming hard to keep up. It so happens that all these changes are directly or indirectly related to the concept of networking, and that almost always involves people parting with their personal information. Networking is definitely today’s buzzword. Everyone is trying to get a piece of the cake, with many Facebook-clones appearing everyday, hopeful to cash in on the success of the original. Other than Facebook, microblogging sites such as Twitter have brought an entirely different perspective of connecting with people. These websites have already made a huge impact in our lives and are rapidly changing the Internet for everyone. It remains to be seen how far they will continue to evolve and how they will manage to further affect the future of the Internet. It cannot be predicted exactly how networked the future world might be, but it can be said for sure that

people will surely not stopping sharing their information with their friends and even with complete strangers whom they have met on the Internet. This means that the future will definitely see a lot of these people tying together their real lives with their virtual counterparts on these social networking sites. As long as these websites try to maintain a certain level of privacy for their users, there would be nothing to worry about, and it would surely be a whole lot of fun for everyone involved. However, thanks to the commercialization of the Internet, these sites have given privacy a boot, and are continuing to harvest more and more information about their users, in order to make a nice little profit for themselves. As mentioned before, the dangers of an increasingly networked world are only starting to become evident; it is up to the millions of Internet users all around the world to decide how much they want their network to influence and run their life. Until the sharing comes down to a decent level, it is inevitable that this networked world will soon forget the meaning of the word, privacy. 3 BASICS OF NETWORKING

There is an undeniable fact due to which networking, and social networking in particular, has become popular – we like to brag. That’s right, everyone brags about their achievements, and they would surely like it if as many people as possible came to know about them. It is this simple concept that fueled the growth of networking, and today the masses are ready to adapt to any networking solution that will bring them as close as possible to their friends and contacts. Taking one look at the leading social-networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace is enough to tell that these sites actively encourage users to part with their personal information, and egg them on with prompts that their profile needs to be filled. Once the users fill out their entire profile, the website starts using this information in many ways, the most popular one of them being targeted advertising, which brings in a lot of revenue for the site. The crux of all forms of networking in these days is the social-networking model. Even businesses and companies are moving onto social-networking sites with a hope to stay in touch with their clients and even recruit new talent. It’s no surprise that anyone would easily mistaken social-networking to be the only form of networking going on in today’s world. As the days pass by, it is hard to believe that we once used to live without updating our status on Facebook, or making a useless tweet on Twitter. These websites have brought a difference in our lives in such a short span of time that it is hard to believe we ever lived without these sites. Social networking sites have become so popular that they are even beginning to change the way we live, and are appearing at every stage of our lives, eager to share our every moment of glory with the world, eager to capture every second of our lives as a photograph and stick it up on a wall! Indeed, theses sites have come so far that they are just beginning to show how dangerous they

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could become. The first and foremost website to be careful about is Facebook. 4 FACEBOOK AND ITS INFLUENCE

Facebook, the world’s largest social networking site, is one of the prominent forces to be reckoned with on the Internet today. Within a short span of six years, it has managed to persuade 500 million people across the world to use its services, and at least 250 million of those people use Facebook everyday, in one form or the other. Facebook has leapt out of the computer and has found its way into people’s hands, with the Facebook mobile application. In fact, many mobile manufacturers have begun marketing their phones to be Facebook-ready, in an attempt to woo more people to buy their phones. This shows just how powerful Facebook’s reach is. It has managed to capture the social-networking market in a lot of countries, and is still going strong, with no competition in sight. Facebook started off as a website designed to connect students of the Harvard University, but soon expanded to other colleges, countries and finally it became a world-wide phenomenon. It actively encourages its users to update their profiles regularly and upload photos, videos, and any other information that their friends might find interesting. The website has a very thin view on privacy, and this is evident from the numerous changes made to their privacy policy many times over. In fact, the founder and CEO of Facebook, has already declared that the intention behind creating Facebook was to make the world an open place, where there are no boundaries or where nothing is hidden. The only problem is, Facebook has given rise to concerns over user privacy and security. The website’s ethical values have been questioned various times, and there is still no clear answer. But Facebook’s influence cannot be underestimated. Even giant corporations like Google and Microsoft maintain active Facebook profiles, because they realize how powerful this medium is. Having 500 million registered users certainly gave Facebook a chance to gloat about their statistics. According to Facebook, there are 250 million active users everyday, and they post around 30 billion pieces of content every month! [4] This content includes status updates, photos, videos, links to favourite websites and so on. This massive surge of content is testimony to the fact that people all over the world have absolutely no qualms about sharing their private lives online. In fact, they are proud to share their moments of pride and shame with their list of friends. There are many (in) famous photographs on Facebook showing people drunk in parties, or showing a side of their personality that is not usually apparent in the real world. The launch of Facebook Connect in December 2008 [5] is seen to be a very prominent event. Facebook Connect enabled Facebook users to log in to various websites and applications using their Facebook account, so that they did not have to register again with the site, providing the same information all over again. Originally

intended to be an application to save time, Facebook Connect instantly revealed how this information could be easily misused. Any third-party site can easily misuse the information obtained using Facebook Connect and this seriously questions the reliability of this API. Based on the skills of the third-party website owner, the API can be tweaked to extract the maximum possible information from the user, even if the user chooses not to use that website later on. It’s like a lifetime contract with the website owner that the user will continue providing information to the website, which can be used for targeted advertising or other purposes. This is the reason why the Facebook Connect API is a tricky thing, and users should refrain from using it on untrustworthy sites. 5 SECURITY ON FACEBOOK

Given the popularity of Facebook, there were bound to be security issues with it. A worm known as Koobface began to spread on Facebook, infecting the systems of whoever opened it, and compromising their Facebook account as well. Koobface exploited the messaging system of Facebook, where it sent out messages from a compromised account to everyone on that account’s friends list. The message included a catchy title, prompting the user to click on an embedded link, which contained the worm. This issue has now been resolved, and to ensure that such a thing does not happen again, Facebook has included a feature which shows a preview of the site to which the embedded links will lead to. While Koobface has almost died out, other security risks are bound to come in, catching unaware users and targeting their innocence to compromise their accounts. 6 FACEBOOK'S POLICIES

One of the biggest reasons why Facebook is so popular with the people is that it is very addictive. Once a person starts noticing his/her friends on Facebook and starts getting all sorts of updates from them, then that person is easily tempted to join in, and start doing everything that his/her friends are doing. Facebook has managed to rein in a large share of its user-base using this simple concept. However, a lot of people fail to see how dangerous it can be to trust Facebook with their information. The website maybe the most popular social networking site in the world, but the company running it has been questioned many times in the past for its ethical values. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook, created the site in his dormitory, with an intention to bring together the students of the Harvard University. During the conceptualization of the site, he worked on a similar site called FaceMash, and for bringing this site to life, he hacked into various websites in order to gather information for FaceMash. This marks him as a very dark character, who wouldn’t mind breaking the rules, just for getting what he wants. There have been allegations that Zuckerberg looked at the profile passwords of several Facebook users in the early days, and tried to guess their email pass-

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words, in order to garner more information about them. Such allegations have seriously dented the reputation of Facebook. In fact, the recently released movie, The Social Network, is based on the creation of Facebook, and how its employees bent a few rules just to get their share of success. Being the world’s largest social networking site doesn’t give the company a clean chit, and users should keep this in mind while uploading photographs or any other information about themselves on the site. Looking at the privacy policy of Facebook makes one wonder whether Facebook actually cares for their users’ privacy or not. Despite multiple revisions to the privacy policy, most people agree that it is still one-sided, swinging heavily in Facebook’s favour. These are just a few reasons for not trusting Facebook entirely, and thus using it only for limited purposes, such as staying in touch with long-lost friends or someone living overseas. Had it not been for the fact that it is very easy to brag on Facebook, there wouldn’t be much to talk about the site in the first place. 7 THE FUTURE

8 CONCLUSION It is actually a healthy sign that more people are opening up to the idea of networking with one another. This will help a lot of people get rid of their shyness to interact with the outside world. Yes, using Facebook and other social networking sites does have a lot of advantages, but that doesn’t mean one should put their life entirely on these sites. Doing so would be extremely risky in the future. That is so because the future is going to be incredibly networked, with every aspect of people’s lives being put online. Leading Internet companies are going all out to ensure that they offer more functionality to their users and help make their online life more interesting and useful. The interesting part is materializing well enough, but the useful part is still doubtful, and there are a lot of risks involved in it as well. There isn’t going to be any significant change in the way people communicate with each other using these sites; but every individual should try to limit the time spent on these sites. The future looks very promising, but behind the rosy picture is an army of bots, designed to grab as much information as possible, and pose a risk to the users involved. So before we go ahead and start living on the Internet, let us snap out of it, and start living in the real world for a change. REFERENCES [1] Wikipedia, “World-Wide-Web”, available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_wide_web [2] InternetWorldStats, “World Internet Users and Population Stats”, available at http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm [3] Wikipedia, “Social Network Service”, available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network_service [4] Facebook, “Statistics”, available at http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statisti cs [5] Wikipedia, “Facebook Platform”, available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_connect#Faceboo k_Connect Pradeep Kumar Puram. He obtained his B.E. Degree from Nagpur Universityin 1993, and his M.Tech degree from Osmania University. He is presently working as a Professor and Head of Department for the department of CSE in Vivekananda Institute of Technology and Science, Karimnagar, India. He has an overall academic work experience of 17 years. He is also the director in the IT Division of Cerebrum Software Solutions Pvt Ltd, Hyderabad, India. Aditya Krishna Haas Rayaprolu. He is currently pursuing his undergraduate degree in CSE at Vivekananda Institute of Technology and Science, Karimnagar, India.

The future does look good for Facebook, but the same cannot be said for its millions of users. Facebook will most certainly not stop its users from spilling their lives onto the site, so it is up to the users to use the site to a limited extent, and not go to a level where their information could be misused. Facebook is bound to introduce more exciting features for its users, with the Facebook Platform being used extensively by application developers. So it’s an exciting time ahead, as long as the users do not get trapped in the addictive game of Facebook. Social-networking sites are no doubt very useful. Countless friendships have been brought back to life thanks to these sites, and millions of people are happy with the fact that they’re keeping in touch with a lot of people without ever leaving the comfort of their homes. However, it is very easy to get lost in this flow and it is not a healthy practice to trust these sites with too much of personal information. Even assuming that these sites will not misuse the information, there’s no guarantee that someone would break into these sites’ database and make merry with all the information. The only solution available is to restrict the use of such sites, and bring them down to a level where only the most crucial and necessary information needs to be shared. It will no doubt be hard to get rid of the addiction, but it is important to fight the urge to share every little bit of information on these sites. Technically speaking, these little bits will soon add up to become bytes, and one may end up revealing information that may be too valuable to measure even in terabytes. Although it is difficult, one should try not to post too many photographs or videos on social networking sites, and especially not on Facebook!

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