By Kevin Olson

After reading through Symantec’s informational white paper on social media safety, I’m struck by a couple of things. The first thing is the feeling that I’ve read a million white papers like this before. This one reads like an long painful echo of the 999,999 before it. The second thing is the realization that this white paper isn’t meant for me; while I’m considerably bored, it’s hard to feel patronized by the material. This paper is meant for the countless amount of rookies who are newish to social media and aren’t experienced enough to avoid malicious phishing attempts that are becoming ever more frequent in social media.

Phishing is, “a way of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication”. A common example on Facebook may happen after clicking a friend’s link on your wall. Let me suggest that this link is of a cute boy or girl that you are interested in seeing. So you click on the link and for some reason, “Facebook” prompts you to re-log in order to proceed.  Since you’re only half paying attention, you quickly volunteer your credentials so that you can finally see the goods. Unfortunately, there are no goods. You’ve just been robbed.

Early this week, reports surfaced that a group of Chinese hackers defrauded US diplomats, military personnel, and journalists by using a technique called “spear phishing” to dupe them out of their g-mail passwords. According to a respected security blogger — the attack that targeted the State Dept. looked like an innocent looking email offering the latest U.S./China joint statement — but if the reader clicked on the document, what appeared next was a Gmail log in page — which was fake — and which fooled some users into giving up their private passwords.

I suppose the message I want to convey is: be skeptical. Do not trust anyone so that your business never loses credibility by getting hacked. While these hackers wanted to spy on the US Government, other hackers may want to hijack your Fan page to post messages about cheap Viagra. On Wednesday, Google’s Official Blog posted  detailed steps for ensuring your g-mail account is safe. Please read this and remember: Be skeptical.