Dubai, United Arab Emirates, June 14th 2012 - Latest research suggests that there are over 28 million Facebook users throughout the Middle East, it is checked first thing in the morning and last thing at night - whether browsing on your mobile, passing time at home or scanning through your news feed in the office. For many people and organizations throughout the region it has become the primary medium for sharing ideas and interacting with friends as well as being a key marketing tool and undoubtedly playing a critical role in social movements across the Arab world.

However, with this growing volume of traffic, 'the social network' is inevitably becoming a hotbed for malware authors and scammers.

"By taking advantage of the users' trust in their network of relationships, they are spreading malicious code and sending spam messages that are harmful to those unknowingly clicking on their friends pages," said Bulent Teksoz, Chief Security Strategist, Emerging Markets, Symantec

"Furthermore, most of the attacks that we currently see use social engineering tricks to spread their messages to thousands of users. Besides reposting spam messages to friends, attacks can lead users to scam surveys or malicious sites that can potentially cause permanent and undoable damage."

With this in mind, Norton have compiled an infographic to help users in the Middle East to learn scams and spams to avoid on Facebook and what they can do to stop these hackers getting access to their friends, photos and personal information.

1. "Like-" or "Share-Baiting"

Scammers will ask the user to Like or Share a Facebook Page to gain special privileges or content not available from Facebook or elsewhere. After liking a page the user will then be forwarded to a survey that asks the user for personal information, where the author (or attacker) will then get a commission for every view

2. "Like" Clickjacking

These malicious pages have hidden "Like" buttons - the user will see an interesting video with a play button, but instead of the video playing, there's a "Like" button hidden behind it. Some pages will even ask the user to click multiple times, generating multiple "Likes" with each click.

3. Malicious Applications

The user will install a Facebook application but it will actually be malicious and take over the users page, giving the attacker the ability to post on the users wall, access the users message and chat with the users friends. This is one of the oldest and most prevalent Facebook scams

4. Copy-Paste Script Attacks

The user will get the promise of an interesting video or website but will need to copy and paste the information into the address bar of the browser. Self-executing scam will then post spam on the user's behalf.

5. Hoaxes

Ever see an interesting story or shocking status updateæ Beware, these are generally hoaxes created to be passed around Facebook. The goal of hoaxes is to either generate traffic to a spam site or simply to troll other users.

It's not all bad news, Norton by Symantec advises users to protect themselves by taking a proactive approach to securing their account and being cautious online. Users can start cleaning up their account by simply removing g offending posts, removing offending application and changing passwords. Users can go to www.facebook.com/hacked to rescue their account if they believe it has been compromised.

Norton currently provides Norton Safe Web for Facebook, a free tool which scans current Facebook news feeds to see if they contain links that are unsafe and provide an easy way for users to protect themselves without forfeiting their day-to-day social media activities.

Please feel free to contact me should you wish to speak to a security expert at Norton by Symantec.