Prevent hacking...

How to Prevent a Facebook Profile Hack

You’ve seen it happen, you may have even done it yourself.
We’re trusting of our friends, so we’re more likely to “click before we think”  when we’re on Facebook. That’s what hackers depend on, and its called social engineering. If a stranger sends an email using questionable grammar and suggesting you click on a link to find out if you’ve won a large cash prize, well, common sense will usually prevail and you’ll delete the email immediately.
But when you’re on Facebook and a smiling friend posts a link that suggests you click to read more about  a funny girl who is “so busted” for what she did on Facebook… that’s where the trouble begins.


Whenever you hover your cursor over a live link, you can view the destination URL of that link in the lower left hand corner of your browser, or email client screen. It lets you look both ways, so to speak, before you pull out on the information highway.
In the example below, two links have been shared to this Facebook Wall. The top link is a blog post from the Progressive Change Campaign Committee about Keith Olbermann’s departure from MSNBC. If you were on this Facebook page and hovered your cursor over the link itself, you’d see the full URL of the blog post on the lower left, as shown.

The bottom post is a Facebook social engineering hack. Well okay, I don’t know for CERTAIN because I didn’t click on it. But I’m suspicious. It promises laughs about whatever this girl did on Facebook that got her “so busted.” If you hovered over this link, you’d see what is called a referral link.

There are many services available that will shorten a long URL, such as the kind generated by blog posts like this one, and refer to the original page when it is clicked. Tiny URL was the original service that has been around for awhile. Largely prompted by Twitter’s 140 character requirement, there are many link shortening referral services available including http://bit.ly which allows you to track who clicks on your shortened links.
Shortened referral links can be extremely useful. The problem is, you can’t tell where you’re going until you get there.
This is where you have to use your judgment, and think twice about your confidence in the destination of a referral link. Consider whether or not your Facebook friend would really post the story about the girl who is so busted.