Spam and malware on social networking sites has risen by 70% according to a report from IT security and data protection firm Sophos. The report has found that criminals targeting social networking users have risen considerably over the year with 57% of users reporting that they have been spammed and 36% reporting that they have been sent malware.
More interestingly the report has also found that 72% of firms are worried that employee’s behavior on social networks with the fear that they are putting the business at risk.
The report goes even deeper in finding out which social networking site is most feared and not surprisingly Facebook was seen as the biggest security threat with 60%. Myspace, Twitter, and LinkedIn in came in second, third and fourth with 18%, 7% and 4% respectively.
This perception of social networking sites does not help the widespread confusion and skepticism towards social media marketing. Only yesterday a report from Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) found that only a fifth of marketers in organisations including some big brands like Coca-Cola and RBS view social media as a core element of their marketing strategy. If you couple this then with the fear of security it would appear that social media marketing has many hurdles to overcome before it is fully embraced.
The good news however is that many of these social networking sites – and certainly the big hitters like Facebook - do in fact deal with spam and malware pretty well and are continuing to adapt to the problem. Once people realize this and begin to understand how to use social media marketing effectively we could see some very different stats in the future…