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2011

ADDITIONAL FACEBOOK PAGE ADMIN MIGHT BE AN ADDITIONAL SECURITY HOLE

September 6, 2011 0

Concerns over Facebook Pages are continuing to worry the social networking giant. The latest update notes that the admins who are appointed by the original creators can remove the administrator rights of the original creator. This could result in draining out efforts of the original creator who had worked on promoting the page for years.

This topic had an argument from a few users who said that the working was as it was intended. This meant that if someone is appointed as an admin by the original creator, then the administrative rights should be the same as that to the original creator. The main problem here would be that the users would not be expecting this to happen and might not be in its favor too. The concern even has a detailing at the Facebook Help Center in the form of a question which says:

A Page can have multiple administrators. Each Page administrator will need to have their own business account or personal account. Every admin can manage the Page from their own Facebook account using the “Page Manager” application that will appear in the left hand column of the Applications section once they become an admin for a Page. Every admin has equal access to and the same abilities as the other admins for a Page, however the original creator of the Page may never be removed by other Page admins.

There was even a video which was created by Sophos, developer and vendor of security software and hardware, which shows a demonstration as to how an appointed admin can remove the administrator status of the original creator. Facebook Page creators usually recruit additional administrators to manage the growing number of fans. At times, admins are even recruited to get more fans for one’s Facebook Page. But this detailing shows that the page creators now will have to be wary about appointing new administrators. The video made by Sophos is posted below:

{iframe width=”560″ height=”345″}http://www.youtube.com/embed/4LSKEoXJUDY{/iframe}

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos had two major thoughts pertaining to the problem. The first one was that the admins appointed might have malicious plans to take over one’s Facebook Page, which might not be the case every time, but there is always a possibility of such a thing happening. The second thought was that even if they do not have any such plans, there is a possibility that the new administrator’s account is hacked and the Page creator would lose out on his page. This means that every time one adds a new admin for their page, there would be an additional security hole which would be problematic for the Page creators.

Facebook Pages have many uses and of late many users are using it as marketing campaigns, which have even proved its worth for the promotion of celebrities, brands and essentially small businesses. The main point is that the cost involved is economically low as compared to the amount of publicity one gets out of it.

Talking again about the concerns, they are not just limited to the efforts being lost if the Page creator’s administrator rights are removed, a bigger scare would be if the new admin destroys the image of one’s page which can be by sending malware, spam and/or scams to the page users.

Facebook has officially not yet responded to the possible havoc which can be created in the time to come.