The Irony Of Facebook

Facebook as huge as it is tops the charts again. But this time these charts are not about advertising or search terms, Facebook has been cited as the number 1 blacklisted website. This is according to the OpenDNS 2010 report.

Facebook records 14.2% followed by MySpace.com and Youtube.com with 9.9% and 8.1% respectively. This shows that the most blacklisted sites are those which falls into the social networking, advertising categories. The top ten is completed by sites that falls into pornography category. Limewire.com is also included in the top ten at the number 8 spot with 1.3%, it is maybe due to privacy and security issues that the site is prone to.

Ironically, Facebook is also on the top 10 whitelisted websites according to the report. In fact it falls on the number two spot with 12.6% following Youtube.com with 12.7%. Website whitelisting is used when you are blocking a whole category of websites but giving permission of access to specific website in that category.

Facebook is also included in the Top Targets of Phishing category. With its popularity and widespread use plus the amount of information stored in its database, Facebook has been targeted by this attacks and other scams. Gathering user information from Facebook is as easy as creating an application. The social networking giant takes the number 2 spot with 5.3% following PayPal.com at first with 45.9%.

The conclusion that the reports left me is that Facebook is the most used, but the most hated site today. Well, being a massive thing like Facebook can attract large numbers of supporters and the unimaginable number of haters.

On a serious note, Facebook may be on the top blacklisted spot because of its privacy issues. Or it is too addicting to let the young people use it so it has to be blacklisted from homes or it is still taken as a distraction by business owners and managers that’s why it has to be blacklisted from the offices too.