MySpace may be a place for friends, but it's also increasingly becoming a place for identity thieves. A bit cleaner than dumpster diving and definitely more anonymous, thieves are using MySpace as one of the biggest repositories of gullable folk to steal information from them. Given the ease of use that MySpace provides, many people forget that they are still dealing with the same Internet they are anywhere else. Whether it is outright asking someone for their usernames and passwords or relying on malware, social networking sites - of which MySpace is one of the biggest - they are all huge targets.
Many of the tricks are things we're all used to. Fake pages, fake ads, et cetera:
Once the fake profile loads, a blue screen descends, saying the profile is protected by the "MySpace Adult Content Viewer." Unsuspecting users who try to download the viewer instead get a worm that installs adware on their computers.
Earlier this year, they committed themselves to improving security. Despite that, this year they've been hit with several major incidents that left their users compromised. Considering the audience MySpace targets, which is very wide, it's really up to them and them alone to make sure their service is secure.