Grab Your Facebook Profile Name Today

As of Saturday, June 13, Facebook allows you to create your unique profile name so that you can provide a link to potential followers using your name instead of a ID number. I quickly grabbed mine, which gave me flexibility as to how I wanted my profile name to look.

For those of you who have a common first name and last name, and if you haven’t already, be sure to create your user name right away because it may already be taken.

You can click here to set up your new profile name:

http://www.facebook.com/username/

If you are not already on my list on Facebook, you can find me here:

http://www.facebook.com/AlethaMcManama

I Fought the Facebook Virus and Won

Over the weekend, I managed to click on a video link embedded in one of my Facebook friend’s personal message not realizing that it would end up being a headache later on. That link ended up being a malicious, virus-infected web page that decided to attach itself to my hard drive and continued to irritate me to no end. It turned out that it was a bogus ad telling me I needed to download their virus protection software, when in fact, it was a way for malware and trojan files to attach itself to my own hardware files. Yikes!

Quickly I visited the Facebook security section and the virus was one that came out back in December 2008 called the “Koobface” virus. Here’s a complete definition of the virus:

Koobface is a worm that infects computers by using the messaging system of social networks like Facebook and MySpace. Other Koobface known variants are Boface, W32.Koobface, Net-Worm.Win32.Koobface.b, and W32/Koobface. The Koobface worm attacks profiles by sending an email to a user’s Facebook inbox with subjects like “You look just awesome in this new movie” or “You look funny in this new video” and the email message provides a link to a malicious video website. The malicious video website will prompt the user to download the fake video codec file flash_player.exe under the assumption that the user needs to update the Flash program to view a video. The flash_player.exe is really a doorway meant to let Koobface infect your computer.

Once installed, Koobface downloads a program called tinyproxy.exe. Tinyproxy.exe loads a proxy server called Security Accounts Manager which Koobface uses to monitor traffic on TCP port 9090 and proxies all outgoing HTTP traffic. Koobface hijacks search results from search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN and replaces the results with links of malicious websites.

Koobface may redirect you to malicous websites that sell rogue security tools. Koobface has the ability to recreate itself after reboot. It is strongly recommended to remove Koobface from your system upon detection.

I knew that I had good virus protection software, but still felt unsecure knowing that I have my own personal information stored on my computer. I ended up losing sleep over the fact that someone could be spying on my computer within the short time that I had the infected files on my hard drive. But it also forced me to realize that I needed to continue to change my userid and passwords on a regular basis so that I can deter the potential invasion of my personal information (bank information, credit cards, etc.)

I ran several scans on my computer, finding some infected files, but most of them were cache files that I cleaned off my computer. Plus, I also restored my computer back before the infection incident. That did clear up the “ad” problem I was having too.

Did I learn a lesson here? Oh, you bet I did! One of the most important lessons that I want to ingrain in everyone’s mind is before you decide to open a questionable message or link, consider that you are running a business and know that this type of activity can impact your client base if they are associated with your database. Have the mindset that you are running a business, not catering to your personal needs and opening up every email, every link that hits your inbox.

If you want to learn more about how to secure yourself on Facebook, visit their security section at www.facebook.com/security. They have a great list of resource sites for security protection which I strongly urge you to have on your own computer. It will give you that peace of mind you deserve.