Networking, friending, and info leak

This subject, yet again, could easily expand into a book and is largely out of the scope of this volume. However, given the possible risks from malware and social engineering to our WordPress sites, at least, we must highlight the over-riding concerns.

Social networks, chat services, and similar networking opportunities are the latest security battlefield. The user's enthusiasm to pal up to strangers coupled with the eagerness of networks to milk users' private details for ad-targeting equates to a hacker's paradise.

This applies not only to services such as Facebook and Twitter, or the more business-centric networks such as LinkedIn, but equally to tools such as Skype, to messaging services, with sites such as Digg, to IRC, the use of Usenet, to P2P and to those torrent sites. Equally, discretion is required in forums, on wikis, and lest we forget, in blog comments.

Alarm isn't limited merely to over-zealous friending or casually sharing our profiles, photos...