Online Security's Weakest Link: Men

On the internet, no one knows you're a dog. But apparently they do know you're a doofus, especially if you're a guy.

Internet security is a growing concern. Between Chinese cyber warriors, Russian fraudsters and teenage hackers, every email account is a target. And it turns out that according to new research the easiest scam is also the oldest: pretend you're a woman interested in a man and guys start handing out all manner of confidential info. Women, on the other hand are more sensible, which is to say cautious.

Are we surprised? JL

Constantine von Hoffman reports in CIO:

Forget about bots, software flaws and hacking passwords, here’s a way to do some serious online crime without all that high tech bother: Pass yourself off as woman. From credit card scams to Facebook come-ons, guys are more likely to fall for a pair of virtually pretty eyes.

Last month cops in Russian busted 35 guys who pretended to be women online to scam foreign guys out of $156,000. "Acting as female residents of the republic, members of the criminal group carried out electronic correspondence with foreigners under the pretext of getting to know each other,” according to prosecutors. “In the course of their communications, they asked the foreigners to send money for the various needs of their 'beloveds.'" As the saying goes, “On the internet, no one knows you’re a dog.”
Guys on Facebook are even more likely to fall for the old, “Hi there, handsome. New in town?” According to a study by Bitdefender, female Facebookers aren’t as tempted as men when faced with attractive photos of strangers - either male or female - and are less likely to accept friend requests from random people. While 64.2 percent of women always reject friendship requests from strangers on social networks, only 55.4 percent of men did so. When an attractive woman's photo was associated with the profile, men were more likely to accept friend requests. Also, just under a quarter of men leave their social network accounts searchable by strangers, compared with 16 percent of women.

Given that it is no surprise there is now a Facebook worm which is gaining access to accounts by pretending to be two blonde women. Originally ID’s by Danish security researchers at CSIS, the worm appears to be spread via malicious links on the site. As reported by Naked Security, clicking on the link gets you a malicious screensaver hidden behind the icon of two blondes. The screensaver then tries to download more malware from another site.

So if you really want to improve security the best course may be to walk around and dope slap some of the guys in the office periodically. Then break it to them gently that most bikini models don’t dream of spending time hanging with the nerdly types.