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Generally speaking, I'm looking at a business environment. I know that Facebook Ads are not vetted and can contain malware, also users can share files on some social media sites. But what else is there? And are there any practical solutions to these problems?

Arlix
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    Its difficult to say, I can say yes it is a security risk I often like to refer to facebook as "the hackers database" as its a perfect point to start with any social engineering, why go through peoples trash and spend hours researching someone when they have facebook? Any idiot will post on facebook their pets, family, birthdays, old schools, pictures, friends, likes, dislikes. You might as well just tell me your password? trail through their posts and you will most likely find their email or phone numbers.. – TheHidden Nov 26 '15 at 09:35
  • Yes social media websites are a security risk. They are abused more due to the popularity and the masses that are on the service. The real question comes down to your environment. If your information and data is of extreme sensitive nature, they should be all blocked. Let users use there phones and there own cellular network. If you are going to allow it at work, users must be trained on spoofing, hyperlinks, spearfishing, what an executable file is etc, and be added to a white list per managements approval to allow past the firewall. – MichaelEvanchik Jul 25 '19 at 18:55

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As you said, the main threats on Facebook are the ads and malicious links/files users can share between each other. In terms of Ads, you can use an ad-blocker such as uBlock Origin or AdBlock, which as the name suggest will remove any side-bar ads.

In terms of not clicking malicious/suspicious links, well, that's down to the user, as long as they are well informed then there's not too much else you can do - it's assumed they don't open spam e-mails and click those links, so perhaps explain to your users that they should treat suspicious Facebook links in the same manner.

As already mentioned, the real, and perhaps most dangerous threat is one that you cannot prevent or guard your users against, which is social engineering. It helps to keep your private life private but unfortunately not everyone considers that, which makes Facebook a real goldmine for anyone with time on their hands and a malicious intent.

rferguson
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