Or is it?

Many hospital libraries I have spoken with since I arrived on the scene here at the GMR have told me of difficulties in accessing social software tools like blogs, wikis and instant messaging.  The IS/IT departments say they have no staff to deal with any extra software or possible technology troubleshooting that might be required as result of access to some of these tools.

In fact, I am currently co-teaching the class “Geeks Bearing Gifts” as an online class via Moodle.  We had made available as one of the required “readings,” two YouTube videos.  Most of the students wrote to the instructors and said they were denied access to the site.  As a workaround, we downloaded the video (and received copyright clearance) and posted them an alternative way, so students could see them.  Why deny YouTube? For the most part it is due to the bandwidth required to view videos on the site.

What about other social software apps like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Meebo, and Google Reader? Did you know there is a Facebook worm? Apparently this worm has also found it’s way into Google Reader.

Just to give you something to think about while you are trying to sleep during the Thanksgiving holiday, here are some more recent reports of security issues with social software.

“Facebook Application causes a distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack”

“Mobile Malware: Coming to a Smartphone Near You?”

“Malware and Spam Attacks Exploiting Picasa and ImageShack”

“Facebook and MySpace are ‘Hacker Playgrounds’”

“Web 2.0 Sites a Thriving Marketplace for Malware”

I could go on and on with news reports just like these.  Have any of you experienced any security issues or threats in regards to social software? Is this what is causing your IT/IS staffs to think twice about allowing you access to these tools? Comments welcome.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 25th, 2008 at 10:37 am and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.