Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and Twitter users are more vulnerable to financial loss, identity theft and malware infections than they realise.

Social networking sites encourage users to behave in risky rays, the survey of more than 1,000 users by security firm Webroot found.

Three in 10 people admitted they had been attacked by cybercriminals through social networking sites in the past year. identity theft and infections by malware are common. Many users have no idea how much personal information is publicly available in their profiles on social networks. Indeed far too many users have no restrictions on who can see their profiles and have no idea just how visible they are to search engines.

Criminals typically use personal information to guess passwords and access accounts. Unauthorised password changes and friend-in-distress scams are common.
Once criminals are able to access accounts they send legitimate looking messages containing malware to other members of the social network.

Social networkers should use privacy setting to restrict access to personal information, restrict personal information in profiles and use different passwords for each network. Malware authors are continually writing new programs to avoid detection, so even if users have anti-malware installed, they must remain vigilant.