The Washington Post warns of a new security threat to users of social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. Apparently a new scam is doing the rounds whereby users may receive a bogus message from a 'friend' which leads to a joke video that displays on a web page that appears to be from YouTube and tells users that they need to download the latest software version to view the video. However, the downloaded file is actually malicious software that allows hackers to take over the computer and may also track keyboard activity to identify a user's passwords for secure sites.

As users of social networking sites tend to be both trusting and curious of messages from 'friends' these sites are being seen as prime sources of spam and malicious software. The article quotes research from Cloudmark, which says that an average of 64 spam attacks have been reported over the last year on social networking sites, with 37% of users having noticed an increase in unwanted messages over the past 6 months.