Mobile numbers, addresses on Facebook 'a security risk'

Sydney, Jan 17 (ANI): A security expert has warned that users should remove their home addresses and phone numbers from their Facebook accounts.

Graham Cluley said the website now gives third parties access to that information.
The website said in a blog post at the weekend that it would give developers of applications access to the contact information of users who install their apps.
"These permissions must be explicitly granted to your application by the user via our standard permissions dialogs. Please note that these permissions only provide access to a user's address and mobile phone number, not their friend's addresses or mobile phone numbers," the Sydney Morning Herald quoted Facebook's Jeff Bowen as saying.
However, Sophos security expert Cluley, has raised doubts over the move.
"You have to ask yourself - is Facebook putting the safety of its 500+ million users as a top priority with this move?" he said.
"It won't take long for scammers to take advantage of this new facility, to use for their own criminal ends."
Cluley advised that users should take personal info such as home addresses and mobile numbers off their pages.
"You can imagine, for instance, that bad guys could set up a rogue app that collects mobile phone numbers and then uses that information for the purposes of SMS spamming or sells on the data to cold-calling companies," he said. (ANI)

How to Protect Your Web Server From Hackers ?

Creating your own website is not simply about putting some pages and information online. Ensuring the security of your website is a bigger and highly crucial task. Most websites these days have a dedicated web server that gives them the leverage to grow and develop further. Basically the websites with a high volume of web traffic, a heavy database and complex application specifications require an exclusive web server. It is extremely important to hack proof your web server in order to protect your website and business.
There are a great number of hackers out there in the web world who are looking for opportunities to exploit your web server and cause serious damage. These hackers look to deface the websites with malicious content, use the scripts on the server to send out spam or phish out the personal sensitive information of the website users. Such attacks also attempt to tamper with parameters and gain access to confidential files or cross-site scripting or cookie poisoning to alter the customer data. These kinds of invasions can prove to be fatal for e-commerce and finance based websites. To prevent your web server from falling prey to such web attacks, here are some important recommendations and anti hacking tips.You need to follow a two-pronged approach to safeguard your web server from any hackers.

The first layer is a firewall that exists to block any unwarranted unused Internet ports. A good firewall will use a rule based access system to allow only the legitimate users to enter and filter out as well as obstruct any malicious traffic from accessing the server. Also create strong passwords that use a combination of characters, numbers and special characters in order to keep the password hackers at bay.
The second element is to put in place an intrusion protection service. This is a more sophisticated approach to deal with hackers wherein you stop the illegitimate entry of users at the source itself. If a firewall works on the front line, an intrusion protection system works on the back end to deal with the enemies. This involves putting all the compromised hosts in the quarantine section and letting the genuine users move through efficiently. But setting up such an anti-hacking arrangement is only the first step. The hackers are moving fast and ahead with newer techniques to break into and sabotage the web servers. So, you need to continually update and monitor the filters, blacklists and all other aspects.