I mention this whenever I get a chance to talk to teens or parents of teens; the biggest real worry about ever popular social networking sites like MySpace isn't online predators (as most people believe) but phishing attacks. Scores of MySpace pages have been hacked so that each visitor with an unprotected machine gets keystroke loggers or requests for passwords or other attacks on their system. Many of the pages themselves are built using free, third-party applications that are already infected when the user downloads them (one online blogger calls them "a pig's breakfast of clutter and multimedia files"). The latest security problem is infected musical group pages which is apparently what happened to the MySpace page for R&B vocalist, Alicia Keys. No one is entirely sure what happened (possibly her site manager gave a phisher the account password) but visitors to her MySpace page who clicked on certain links ran the risk of getting infected by the hacker's code. You can read more about it here.
To protect yourself:
1. Make sure your computer is running the latest security software and you have run LiveUpdate before you go online.
2. If anything pops up or alerts you for permission to install something or to get your account password, log off.
3. Make sure your kids know about the risks of unprotected visits to MySpace pages.
4. Optional: don't be logged into your own MySpace account when you're viewing others' pages. There are some out there who believe having your login stored in a cookie during your session will be enough for a determined hacker.