For a regular web user, a blog is not something that needs an explanation. But, for someone who’s not so web-savvy, what does a blog mean? In simple terms, a blog is similar to a simple website with a theme and has content displayed in a chronological order, which means the latest posted content is displayed first. If you have a blog of your own, you can use it to write content related to your chosen topic and keep adding and modifying those posts.

Blogging is just like maintaining a public online journal, stating events, incidents and daily occurrences. Most often, blogs attract a lot of search engine traffic, because people love to find out information and opinions offered by the global community. Hugely popular with internet marketers, blogging is a step towards bringing in like-minded individuals from every corner of Earth.

Over the past 5-6 years, blogs have taken over the online world in a remarkable and trendy way, with the popular blogs drawing thousands of visitors every day. Ideas, comments and opinions exchange between a large group of people through a virtual friendship.

Most people create blogs with the sole aim of attracting numerous readers, because when there are many readers sharing their own view points in a single place, the opportunity for making a profit through marketing products and services to them is very high. Plenty of businesses and individuals depend on constant blog traffic to market products and services to online consumers.

Would you like to have your own blog? There are no limitations on how many blogs you can maintain, so you can just go ahead and sign-up for as many as you want. Writing for a blog requires you to spend some time and effort on it, particularly if you want everyone surfing the internet to know who you are. Keeping your blog posts new and constantly updated will make it more interesting and bring in more visitors. Some blogging tips are given below for your consideration.

Choose an intriguing topic: Do some research on what’s popular and the type of content that generally attracts people looking for a good read. Stick to a topic that’s interesting and make sure you have some genuine knowledge about it.

Adapt a conversational tone: Never sound like you are at a meeting and presenting a report to the board of directors. Use an easy “speaking” tone in your writing and avoid big words. Encourage your readers to comment too.

Decide how often to blog: You should decide beforehand about how often you’ll blog. Daily is better, but update your content at least once a week.

Social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook and Bebo have experienced a huge surge in popularity recently. Sites like these allow users to communicate with their friends and meet new friends, but they can also expose them to malware, phishing and other online dangers. As the use of Web 2.0 applications, like social networking sites, wikis and blogs continues to rise, they are attracting increased attention from cyber criminals. Many of the users flocking to these sites are new to the Internet and lack experience in dealing with online threats.

The threats described in this article have now been countered by site owners, but new ones will appear in future as attackers develop their techniques in response to improved security. The interactive nature of social networking sites allows them to spread threats very quickly, making them attractive targets. Many of these threats exploit the fact that people trust their friends, without realizing that it is important to treat electronic communications with care, no matter who they seem to be from.

As with other aspects of Internet use, threats can be split into two categories: behavior-based and technology-based.

Behavior-Based

Behaviour-based threats arise largely because users are careless regarding the personal information they share online. This can leave them vulnerable to phishing attacks and identity theft. Users often publish details of their friends, their likes and dislikes, hobbies and jobs, without realizing that this information can be invaluable to identity thieves as it can help them appear more credible.

Sophos, an IT security company, carried out research on a random sample of Facebook users which showed that 41% of them would give out personal information like as email address, birthday and phone number to a complete stranger. They posted a fictitious Facebook profile for a green plastic frog named Freddi and sent out 200 friend requests to random users across the world. 87 of those contacted replied and 82 of them supplied personal data, such as email addresses, date of birth, information about their education or workplace, address and phone number, as well as pictures of friends and family and information about partners, pastimes and likes and dislikes.

Internet Safety website Get Safe Online found in 2007 that one in four British social networking users had posted confidential personal information, such as their address or phone number or on their profiles. 13% of users had posted information or photos of other people online without their permission. This figure increased to an alarming 27% among 18-24 year-olds.

Threats other than phishing can found on social networking websites. Eleven Canadian high school were suspended after making comments about their principal on Facebook when the school imposed a ban on electronic devices and implemented a uniform policy. A school spokesman claimed that the comments constituted cyber-bullying and described them as vulgar and profane.

There have been several stories claiming that young girls have been raped by older men who encountered them via MySpace or Facebook, but none of these appear to have been conclusively proved. The real problem is that social networking sites offer an opportunity for men to meet young girls in an unsupervised environment, something which should be of grave concern to parents.

Technology-Based Threats

Social networking sites can also be a source of technology-based threats. They allow millions of people to post content, so it’s inevitable that some of these will be malicious individuals attempting to post malware.

At the beginning of 2008 more than three million Facebook users were infected with spyware in less than four days. A widget named “Secret Crush” or “My Admirer” is thought to have been downloaded by one and a half million users. It claimed that it would tell users who had a secret crush on them, but actually tricked them into downloading the infamous Zango spyware, which spread by asking unsuspecting users to forward it to five friends.

According to anti-virus vendor Symantec, vulnerabilities which could be used by hackers to snatch control of Windows PCs have been found in a pair of ActiveX controls that both Facebook and MySpace provide to users for uploading images to their pages via Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) browser. The controls are based on an ActiveX control named Image Uploader, produced by Aurigma Inc.

Late in 2005, 19-year old Samy Kamkar wrote a worm that infected over a million MySpace users and caused a complete shutdown. The Samy worm added a million friends to his profile in only a few hours, adding the string “but most of all, Samy is my hero” to all their profiles. Kamkar was given a sentence of three years probation and 90 days of community service.

In January 2008 a 17-gigabyte file containing more than half a million pictures obtained from private MySpace profiles appeared on BitTorrent, a well-known peer-to-peer file sharing service. This is biggest privacy breach to date on a social networking site. It was made possible because a security vulnerability, first reported in Autumn 2007, allowed hackers to access the photo galleries of some MySpace users who had set their profiles to private. This is the default setting for users aged under 16. This attack allowed pedophiles and voyeurs to target vulnerable 14- and 15-year-old users.

Brazilian users of Google’s Orkut application were attacked in December 2007 by a worm that attempted to take control of their computers and steal their bank account details. It spread via booby-trapped links placed on the personal page of Orkut users and infected users when they viewed messages that came from friends who had already been exposed.

Google quickly closed the loophole which allowed the attack to take place, but another worm, known as Scrapkut appeared early in 2008. Scrapkut was initially thought to be relatively harmless, but it was later discovered that it could intercept the login sessions of a number of Brazilian banking Web sites and replace certain sections with a fake authentication prompt which could capture the users’ logon credentials.

YouTube has also been used indirectly to spread malware. Many Internet users have received spam messages asking them to click on an attached YouTube video clip. However, the link actually takes them to a fake YouTube site where they are told that they need to install Adobe Flash Player to play the video. Clicking the supplied link causes a file called install_flash_player.exe to be downloaded. This is the same name as the real Flash installer, but it actually installs a Trojan known as Trojan-Dropper.W32/Agent.

How Can You Protect Yourself?

We’ve considered some of the dangers that can be found on social networking sites, but what steps can you take to protect yourself against them? Fortunately, most of the technoology-based attacks can be prevented by the usual software defenses, ie: anti-virus software will protect you against viruses, Trojans and worms, anti-spyware programs will protect you against spyware and adware. A good-quality firewall will protect you against hackers and Internet safety suites will protect you against a variety of threats.

Behavior-based attacks, which rely on persuading users to behave in an unsafe manner, are more difficult to deal with as they can only be countered by a change in user behavior. The Get Safe Online website provides a number of guidelines for networking safely, including the following:

Don’t let peer pressure push you into doing something you’re not comfortable with.

Avoid posting information that could identify you, such as telephone numbers, photos of your home, workplace or school, your address, date of birth or full name.

Choose a user name that doesn’t include any personal information.

Set up a disposable email account (eg: Hotmail or GMail) that doesn’t look like your real name and use that to register and receive mail from the site.

Use a strong password with at least eight characters.

Avoid saying anything or publishing pictures that could embarrass you later.

Use the site’s privacy features to restrict access to your profile.

Watch out for phishing scams.

If you ensure that your software defenses are strong and up-to-date and follow the above guidelines you should be able to enjoy surfing on social networking sites without problems.

If you have young children you should ensure that they are not allowed access to the Internet in an unsupervised environment. It’s much better if the computer is in a family area, such as a lounge or dining room, rather than hidden away in a bedroom. Even with older children you should try to keep an eye on their Facebook or MySpace profiles and watch out for any changes in behavior which may suggest that they are encountering online problems.