Reported by TechCrunch, according to a new data report from comScore Facebook drew more than 200 million unique visitors in the month of December compared to Myspace’s number, just over 100 million. Just six months ago Facebook and Myspace were tied around 100 million visitors, but Facebook’s numbers shot up at a rate of 10.8 percent per month on the global scale while Myspace stayed stagnant.

In the U.S., Myspace still leads, but has not grown its visitor numbers for most of the year. Facebook, on the other hand, has been increasing at a rate around 3.8 percent each month so while Myspace is currently the leader, it won’t be for long if the trend continues. By the end of this year, Facebook should have a lead over Myspace in the U.S., in addition to absolutely trouncing Myspace worldwide.

While spamming via e-mail services remains prevalent, spammers see social networks as the new horizon. Spammers have managed to set up phony social networking accounts, by breaking the protections set in place by a safeguard known as CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart), the letters you normally have to type in when you register for a website that says “Are you a human?”

Luckily, if you’re wading in the social networking pool, you can revisit some core security principles in order to protect yourself from spammers and other characters on Facebook who can ruin your computer or identity.

- Re-do Your Password: It’s Probably Not Strong Enough

Some cyber criminals have become remarkably good at obtaining social networking passwords through phishing schemes. Sergeant cites the case of a spammer in Canada who lured Facebook users into offering up their personal information to sign up for products offered by a fake company selling “male enhancement drugs.”

In a lawsuit, which Facebook won for an amount just shy of $900 million, the social network alleged that the spammer sent out four million spam messages from accounts in which he had obtained the passwords.

- Watch Those Third-Party Applications

Facebook has built an ecosystem of third party applications, from games to widgets. But some apps have been shown to be completely fraudulent. Applications have been created to install malware on your computer and access your personal information (a right that third-party apps typically reserve to do on Facebook).

While Facebook does a good job of policing the site and dealing with app problems once they learn of them, the ecosystem is so big that it’s hard to stop poor players, Sergeant says. So users must be educated and cautious about installing apps. In general, watch for apps that bait you with learning a piece of information by clicking on a button (since this generally will initiate an install).

These apps tend to pander to basic human curiosities. A common example: “Jane has written some personal information about you! Click here to find how what she said!”

Remember that when you click to install an app like that, it not only puts your computer and network at risk, but also potentially sends the same invite out to everyone on your friend list.

- User-Generated Spam

Social networks like Facebook rely on users to enrich the experience by posting content such as pictures and video (as well as links) and then sharing the content with their contacts. Spam-based social networkers will go to other people’s comment threads, for instance, and chime in with links that, if clicked on, will install malware.

For example, if you post a news story, a spammer might comment, “I blogged about this and check out this link.” This can be trickier to decipher than a spam-based e-mail, since the participant looks fairly genuine about participating in the discussion on the surface. In fact, the comment might be left with your friends name on it if his or her account was hijacked.

“It enables spammers to post blog comments on the pages of other contacts and allows them to send messages from the phished accounts to other contacts,” the report says.

In other words, if it doesn’t sound like your friend who left the comment, it very well might not have been. Check with that person directly before you click on the link (especially if you don’t recognize the URL as a household name).

As social networking tools change the way we communicate, spammers have begun turning their attention to services such as Facebook and MySpace, tricking users into installing viruses, launching fraudulent websites and deploying malware throughout their computers and networks, accoring to a a new report by MessageLabs.

While spamming via e-mail services remains prevalent, “spammers see social networks as the new horizon,” says Matt Sergeant, senior anti-spam technologist at MessageLabs. Spammers have managed to set up phony social networking accounts, according to MessageLabs, by breaking the protections set in place by a safeguard known as CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart), the letters you normally have to type in when you register for a website that says “Are you a human?”

Luckily, if you’re wading in the social networking pool, you can revisit some core security principles in order to protect yourself from spammers and other characters on Facebook who can ruin your computer or identity, Sergeant says.
1. Re-do Your Password: It’s Probably Not Strong Enough

Some cyber criminals have become remarkably good at obtaining social networking passwords through phishing schemes. Sergeant cites the case of a spammer in Canada who lured Facebook users into offering up their personal information to sign up for products offered by a fake company selling “male enhancement drugs.”

In a lawsuit, which Facebook won for an amount just shy of $900 million, the social network alleged that the spammer sent out four million spam messages from accounts in which he had obtained the passwords.

Sergeant says not only should users be wary of phishing schemes, but also of the fact that research indicates spammers are able to guess passwords. He suggests beefing up your password with unpredictable letters, phrases and numbers. At CIO, we recommend checking out this helpful password how-to from our sister site, csoonline.com.
2. Watch Those Third-Party Applications

Facebook has built an ecosystem of third party applications, from games to widgets. But some apps have been shown to be completely fraudulent. Applications have been created to install malware on your computer and access your personal information (a right that third-party apps typically reserve to do on Facebook).

While Facebook does a good job of policing the site and dealing with app problems once they learn of them, the ecosystem is so big that it’s hard to stop poor players, Sergeant says. So users must be educated and cautious about installing apps. In general, Sergeant says, watch for apps that bait you with learning a piece of information by clicking on a button (since this generally will initiate an install).

These apps tend to pander to basic human curiosities. A common example: “Jane has written some personal information about you! Click here to find how what she said!”

Remember that when you click to install an app like that, it not only puts your computer and network at risk, but also potentially sends the same invite out to everyone on your friend list.
3. User-Generated Spam

Social networks like Facebook rely on users to enrich the experience by posting content such as pictures and video (as well as links) and then sharing the content with their contacts. Spam-based social networkers will go to other people’s comment threads, for instance, and chime in with links that, if clicked on, will install malware.

For example, if you post a news story, a spammer might comment, “I blogged about this and check out this link.” This can be trickier to decipher than a spam-based e-mail, since the participant looks fairly genuine about participating in the discussion on the surface. In fact, the comment might be left with your friends name on it if his or her account was hijacked.

“It enables spammers to post blog comments on the pages of other contacts and allows them to send messages from the phished accounts to other contacts,” the report says.

In other words, if it doesn’t sound like your friend who left the comment, it very well might not have been. Check with that person directly before you click on the link (especially if you don’t recognize the URL as a household name).

Facebook launched almost two weeks ago the Connect program, that lets websites authenticate users with their Facebook login credentials. Now bloggers, thanks to the new Connect Plugin Directory, have a simple way to integrate Connect on their own sites and socialize more with their readers.

Movable Type bloggers got a free plugin that allows any Facebook user to sign in, comment and share their action on a certain site on Facebook. This plugin will also automatically display users’ Facebook photos in one’s comment and can share their comment via the social network’s newsfeed.

In a similar way to Movable Type, WordPress bloggers got a plugin that offers the same commenting possibilities but can also show recent visitors and allow readers to invite friends and share comments. Bloggers that use the Disqus commenting system will also be able to integrate Facebook Connect by the end of the year.

Facebook Connect seems to have a good effect on the number of comments a blog can receive.

Google and MySpace offer similar programs to Facebook’s Connect also. Google’s Friend Connect allows users to sign in with their Google, Yahoo, AIM or OpenID account and interact with other visitors by making friends, sharing media or posting comments. The MySpaceID program works on the same basis and allows users to publish and syndicate their activities to and from partner sites.

The companies want users to be able to use their Google and Facebook logins to enter third-party sites. It benefits users and third-party sites and allows Facebook and Google to collect more information about what users are doing online.

There are some key differences between the services. Google’s service uses OpenSocial. This means sites using Google Friend Connect can use OpenSocial’s open-source applications, such as message boards and ratings gadgets. Google also lets users sign in with their Yahoo!, AOL and MSN usernames.

However, Facebook has an advantage in terms of partnering with large third-party services. Facebook Connect is already working with Digg, StumbleUpon and Loopt. Google Friend Connect’s partners seem to be smaller sites run by individuals, such as Billboard for the People and Qloud.

It’s too early to say how either service will fare, but the Internet is already buzzing with early feedback from site owners.

Google Friend Connect and Facebook Connect are generally designed to extend social-networking capabilities broadly across the Web.

In the real world, this means making it possible for people to use their previously created Google and Facebook accounts to sign in to other Web sites that accept them. That way, people don’t have to create an account for every Web site that requires one, reducing the number of log-in details they need to remember.

MySpace’s Data Availability Initiative has a similar mission.

These programs also aim to let people port elsewhere content they have entered into Google, Facebook and MySpace, like profile information, photos, notes, list of contacts, comments, status updates and the like.

In its announcement on Thursday, Google said Friend Connect is now available to any Web site publisher and that the social features available can be added by copying and pasting snippets of code, so advanced technical knowledge isn’t necessary.

To access Friend Connect features on a Web site, people can log in using not only their account information from Google but also from Yahoo, AOL and the industry standard OpenID, Google said.

Meanwhile, Facebook urged its users to contact their favorite Web sites and encourage them to implement Facebook Connect, which is already running on places like Citysearch, CNN’s The Forum and CBS’ The Insider.

Still, the grand vision of widespread and seamless data portability is far from complete, as these and other initiatives are fairly recent, and important technology and privacy issues remain unsolved.

For example, days after the initial announcements of their data portability programs in May, Google and Facebook promptly locked horns and have been unable to work out their differences. Facebook blocked Google’s Friend Connect service from accessing Facebook members’ data, saying the Google program violates its terms of services because it redistributes Facebook user information to developers without users’ knowledge.

If you’ve received a message like that through Facebook or MySpace, you may have been exposed to the “Koobface” virus. “Koobface” comes through an e-mail sent by one of your social networking site friends inviting you to scope out a video.

Once the URL is clicked, “Koobface” prompts you to update your Flash player before the video can be displayed. Therein lies the virus, cloaked in a “flash_player.exe” file. According to the Kaspersky Lab, an antivirus organization working closely with Facebook, “the worms transform victim machines into zombie computers to form botnets.”

The McAfee Security Blog explains that when “Koobface” infects your computer, it prompts a downloaded service named Security Accounts Manager (SamSs) to load on start-up. SamSs then proxies all HTTP traffic, stealing results from popular search engines and hijacking them to lesser-known search sites.

A clear eye for fraud will help you avoid this mess. You can usually spot phony e-mails by their titles. Kaspersky found the following: Paris Hilton Tosses Dwarf On The Street; Examiners Caught Downloading Grades From The Internet; You must see it!!! LOL. My friend catched you on hidden cam; Is it really celebrity? Funny Moments. My own “Koobface” attack came in an e-mail entitled, lool, yoour blushingg afce is so funny! Checkk out. Obviously, Paris Hilton never threw dwarves, and in all likelihood, my 26-year-old friend knows how to spell more than two words. These are clear indicators you’re being attacked.

Facebook has posted instructions about how to remove the “Koobface” virus: give your computer an antivirus scrub-down and change your Facebook password.

This attack on the world’s most popular social networking site and its 120 million users comes just weeks after Facebook won an $873 million lawsuit against several people accused of hacking user accounts and spreading spam.

Sound familiar? It is. MySpace has its friend connect service and Facebook has its version.

Add it up and you have a good old fashioned ground war over this question: Is social networking a feature or a destination site? For Facebook, the answer so far is that latter–of course it would love you to carry it around to other sites. Simply put, everyone wants to be the suitcase that carries your social graph.

According to google:

Websites that are not social networks may still want to be social — and now they can be, easily. With Google Friend Connect, any website owner can add a snippet of code to his or her site and get social features up and running immediately without programming — picking and choosing from built-in functionality like user registration, invitations, members gallery, message posting, and reviews, as well as third-party applications built by the OpenSocial developer community.

Visitors to any site using Google Friend Connect will be able to see, invite, and interact with new friends, or, using secure authorization APIs, with existing friends from social sites on the web, including Facebook, Google Talk, hi5, orkut, Plaxo, and more.

The tug of war is over control and the ground war is just beginning. Who controls these friend repositories? Even in an age of open data there will be aggregation winners. If Google’s OpenSocial gang disperses these networks then Facebook has issues. If Facebook succeeds with its walled garden approach, it stays a winner. Google’s plan: Adopt social standards and APIs from everywhere to let folks connect. The potential for Google: Be the friend aggregator.

Lump in ad revenue and it’s highly likely that Google will get a few sites to go along with Google Friend Connect.

And let’s not forget Yahoo. Even, Yahoo launched its Open Strategy with plans to infuse social networking throughout its sites. The message: Social networking is a feature not a destination.

Facebook Connect is the next evolution of Facebook Platform – enabling you to integrate the power of Facebook Platform into your own site. Enable your users to…

• Seamlessly “connect” their Facebook account and information with your site
• Connect and find their friends who also use your site
• Share information and actions on your site with their friends on Facebook

Step 1: Request to be “friends” with a dozen strangers on MySpace . Let’s say half of them accept. Collect a list of all their friends.Step 2: Go to Facebook and search for those six people. Let’s say you find four of them also on Facebook. Request to be their friends on Facebook. All accept because you’re already an established friend.

Step 3: Now compare the MySpace friends against the Facebook friends. Generate a list of people that are on MySpace but are not on Facebook. Grab the photos and profile data on those people from MySpace and use it to create false but convincing profiles on Facebook. Send “friend” requests to your victims on Facebook.

As a bonus, others who are friends of both your victims and your fake self will contact you to be friends and, of course, you’ll accept. In fact, Facebook itself will suggest you as a friend to those people.

Step 4: Now, you’re in business. You can ask things of these people that only friends dare ask.