Fifth of Facebook users exposed to malware, says study

Security software manufacturer BitDefender on Monday released statistics showing that 20 percent of Facebook users are exposed to 'malicious posts' in their news feeds of friends' activity on the social-networking site.

A study has found that one in five Facebook users are exposed to malware. Photo credit: Facebook

The figures were gleaned from Safego, a free application that highlights Facebook users' vulnerability to malware. Malicious posts are generally defined as posts that, when clicked on, result in "the user's account being hijacked and in malware being automatically posted on the walls of the respective user's friends", the report said.

The study found that over 60 percent of attacks come from notifications from malicious third-party applications on Facebook's developer platform. Within that, the most popular subset of 'attack apps' (21.5 percent of total kinds of malware) were those that claim to perform a function that Facebook normally prohibits, such as seeing who has viewed a user's profile and who has 'defriended' them. Around 15.4 percent of malicious apps lure in users with bonus items for Facebook games such as free items in FarmVille, while 11.2 percent offer bonus — yet bogus — Facebook features such as free backgrounds and 'dislike buttons'.

For more on this ZDNet UK-selected story, see Study: Fifth of Facebook users exposed to malware on CNET News.