AVG to help students battle Facebook status jacking

16-to-24-year-olds most at risk from attacks

AVG has launched an online campaign to help university students combat Facebook status jacking.

Facebook status jacking sees profiles on the social network being fraudulently access by cybercriminals that have stolen log-in credentials. The hackers then fake, and sometimes even malicious, status messages.

According to AVG, students are the group most at risk of having their status jacked on social networking sites such as Facebook. The security firm's claims are backed up by figures from Ofcom, which revealed that just 15 percent of web users aged 16 to 24 take internet security seriously. Furthermore, just nine percent are concerned about security.

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AVG has launched an online campaign to help university students combat Facebook status jacking.

Facebook status jacking sees profiles on the social network being fraudulently access by cybercriminals that have stolen log-in credentials. The hackers then fake, and sometimes even malicious, status messages.

According to AVG, students are the group most at risk of having their status jacked on social networking sites such as Facebook. The security firm's claims are backed up by figures from Ofcom, which revealed that just 15 percent of web users aged 16 to 24 take internet security seriously. Furthermore, just nine percent are concerned about security.

Research by AVG revealed there are 19,491 malicious pages across the world's 50 most popular social-networking sites. More than half, 11,701, of these appeared on Facebook, while video-sharing site YouTube has 7,163 of the compromised pages.

"The fact that we found almost 20,000 compromised web pages on the world's most popular social networking sites should make social media users sit up and take notice," said Tony Anscombe, from AVG.

AVG hopes to educate students about the dangers of going onto social networks using unprotected connections, and of the need to always log out of sites properly. Two videos about status jacking, featuring comedienne Holly Burns and offering advice on securing social media profiles, are among the materials that will be released over the course of the campaign.

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See also: Facebook users targeted by 'likejacking' attacks