Who has never found spam on their Facebook wall? You become a fan of a page and suddenly, your wall is full of links to external sites that have nothing to do with the objective in the first place.
Well, now a group of Italian researchers calculated the amount of money that it costs to move the unwanted information around social networks: about 150 million Euros a year.
The researchers analyzed 700,000 Facebook posts, and found that about 37,000 were spam. As stated in Mashable by one of the researchers, “Every day there are at least 20,000 posts of unwanted content.”
But what is the price of these posts? This research has determined that a message containing a link can cost, on average, between 10 and 45 Euros, depending on how many ‘Likes’ the Facebook page has.
For example, a spam link on a page with less than 30,000 likes can cost between 4 and 12 Euros, while a page that has more than 100,000 can reach 75 Euros. The price can go up as high as 160 Euros if the page has millions of followers.
What do you do when you receive unwanted content on your Facebook wall?
Panda Security specializes in the development of endpoint security products and is part of the WatchGuard portfolio of IT security solutions. Initially focused on the development of antivirus software, the company has since expanded its line of business to advanced cyber-security services with technology for preventing cyber-crime.
