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Clickjacking: the feature Facebook isn’t so proud of

Molly Wood Aug 19, 2010
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Clickjacking: the feature Facebook isn’t so proud of

Molly Wood Aug 19, 2010
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Amid all the announcements Facebook has been making lately, there’s one feature you might not even know about. But you should. It’s called clickjacking. Maybe this has happened to you: you see a link that says “Justin Bieber’s phone number leaked” or “Top ten t-shirt fails”. Maybe it’s in an ad or maybe it even appears to be posted by your friend.

So you click on it and that’s where the trouble begins. You’re taken to page after page of buttons to click, surveys to take, and permissions to give. Unlike the rest of the web, the links are associated with your friends’ names so you trust them. One recent scam was secretly placing $5 weekly charges on users’ cell phone bills.

We talk to Beth Jones from internet security firm Sophos about how clickjacking works. We also check in with Mashable founder and CEO Pete Cashmore who talks about the advantages scammers have in working on Facebook.

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