fake account

In playing catch up with President Obama's social media savvy, Republican nominee Mitt Romney might have cut some corners. A new report by Barracuda Labs shows that more than 15 percent of Romney's Twitter followers may have come from bogus accounts generated by pay-for-followers services.

"We believe most of these recent followers of Romney are not from a general Twitter population but most likely from a paid Twitter follower service," Barracuda Labs research scientist Jason Ding wrote in the report.

It's important to note, however, that it's not clear if the Romney campaign, an … Read more

Hello, Facebook friends, I am male, straight, often ridiculously good-looking, and this is a real message: she's not that into you.

And by she, I mean one of those hot girls on Facebook who always seems too desperate and overzealous in trying to connect to you and everyone on your friend list.

Apparently, of some 850 million active Facebook users, a lot are fake profiles created to spread spam and viruses. These are often categorized as spammers or attackers. Security firm Barracuda Networks released today the findings from its most recent study that helps distinguish attackers from real users. … Read more

In the sometimes slippery world of the Web, it can pay to cross your "t"s and dot your "i"s.

Case in point:

A colleague sent me a link to a tweet that at first seemed to show that Applebee's Twitter account had been hacked. The account had tweeted: "Poop is food."

As catchy as that tagline might be, it seems a little weird coming from a major restaurant chain. And on closer inspection I thought the page looked a bit suspicious. Only nine tweets had gone out from the account, and … Read more