Are you a Facebook addict? Or a mobile phone junkie? Or both? Look out: you may be one of the main targets of cybercriminals.
With their growing popularity, social networking and mobile communications were among the top targets of online threats in 2010, Internet security firm Symantec said.
In its recently released Internet Security Threat Report for 2010, Symantec noted more than 286 million variants of malware in 2010, and a 93-percent increase in Web attacks.
“A growing proliferation of Web-attack toolkits drove a 93% increase in the volume of Web-based attacks in 2010 over the volume observed in 2009. Shortened URLs appear to be playing a role here too. During a three-month observation period in 2010, 65% of the malicious URLs observed on social networks were shortened URLs,” it said.
Hacking in 2010 had also resulted in data breaches, with each breach exposing some 260,000 identities.