Kaspersky Lab, a leading developer of security and threat management solutions, today announced a partnership with Facebook, with the goal of enhancing the security of social networking both online and offline. Kaspersky Lab is now supplying Facebook with up-to-the-minute data about the latest malicious software threats worldwide, which will be used to protect Facebook users from inadvertently visiting malicious web pages.

People are more likely to click on a link shared by a friend, and this inherent trust is something cyber-criminals prey upon. Malicious URLs can automatically share themselves with a victim's personal contacts without the user's knowledge, making the links appear legitimate. Now, when Facebook users share or click a link shared by their friends, the link will instantly be compared against Kaspersky Lab's database of malicious web pages. If the link matches Facebook's list of known 'bad' URLs - which are supplied to Facebook by Kaspersky Lab and other security vendors - the user will be immediately notified and blocked from visiting the web page. This not only prevents the user's personal information and computer from being put at risk, but stops the malicious links from spreading further.

While a fair amount of Facebook users called it quits when they became sick of getting 10 emails every day begging said user to become a vampire or whatnot, it seems that Facebook users face a new issue. A new Facebook application, "affiliate window", allows users to earn a 1-5% commission whenever they sell various goods to their friends using the application. Any money made by Facebook entrepreneurs is placed directly in the Paypal account of the entrepreneur earning the commission. While the application author believes that he has created a side income for teenagers while getting sales for larger companies around the world, he may have just given users another reason to abandon their Facebook accounts.

Yes, for quite some time, once you had a Facebook account, it wasn't going anywhere. Now, fortunately for college students and people with no attention span everywhere, Facebook now allows said people to delete their Facebook accounts. This was in direct response to user complaints about not being able to delete their accounts, if desired. Even if users were able to delete their own accounts, there were no obvious directions on how to do that. Another reason that Facebook decided to allow users to delete their accounts was a reason that could have gotten Facebook sued if they did not address it: privacy. The "I didn't actually make a Facebook" E-mails were really racking up in Facebook's inbox, and Facebook sometimes made it all too easy for people to research intimate/private/personal details of users' lives. At this point, deleting your account is just a help-page away. Facebook admins are considering adding a "delete account" button.

MySpace has gotten quite a bad reputation. It was put off as a "dates-r-us" for pedophiles at one point, at another it was seen as a distraction to minors, but now it seems like MySpace got a crown for the pile of dirt on their doorstep. Police departments all around America are confirming that criminal gangs (mostly local) are recruiting on social networking sites, especially MySpace. What's worse still is that gang fights will start on the internet, and then people will take them to the street. Some gangs will even post a form of propaganda, just for the purpose of getting children to join their gangs. In response to this story, some social networking sites have already declared that anything illegal or gang-related is immediately deleted and cause for an on-the-spot ban.