According to Websense, spammers are sending messages leading to sites about how to quit smoking. The culprit is said to be following 237 users, just two days after the site’s induction.
The main concern is the speed at which spammers are developing methods of using social networking features to take advantage of casual web users. Google Buzz in particular is said to have a set up that exposes details, which makes it a prime target for spammers.
Mike Geide, senior security researcher with security provider, Zscaler, has commented in his blog; “As a spammer, one could create a network of Gmail accounts connected to Buzz and follow a large number of users, follow their followers, etc. Harvest user names / alias names for those being followed, and do best guess attempts at guessing their email address and start sending test messages.” He continued, “Once a successful guess has occurred, the email address will then be exposed in the Buzz interface validating that the email address exists and is tied to that user.”
Google Buzz – which was set up by the search engine giants to compete with social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace was launched on Tuesday and according to Todd Jackson, product manager of Google Buzz, the site has been a success. He posted in his blog; “ It's been just two days since we first launched Google Buzz. Since then, tens of millions of people have checked Buzz out, creating over 9 million posts and comments. Plus, we're seeing over 200 posts per minute from mobile phones around the world.”
Websense are advising the increasing amount of Google Buzz users to use caution when clicking unknown links.