AVG warns of 20,000 compromised social networking pages

There were over 11,000 compromised pages associated with Facebook alone

AVG is warning users of social networks to be on their guard after new research uncovered over 20,000 compromised web pages belonging to the top 50 such sites.

The security firm analysed the sites through its new AVG Threat Labs online web scanning tool. Unsurprisingly, it found that 11,701 of the 19,491 compromised web pages are on the world's largest social network, Facebook.

YouTube was responsible for 7,163 compromised web pages.

"The fact that we found almost 20,000 compromised web pages should make social media users sit up and take notice," said Tony Anscombe, AVG's head of free products.

"And in particular, it is the audience most active on these sites, the under 25s, who are most at risk."

In related news, security firm Websense warned users of a new spam campaign containing malicious links and attachments which could infect a user's PC with the data stealing Zeus Trojan.

"This is a great example of a blended threat that covers all attack angles - web, email and file based - which steals your data to boot," said Carl Leonard, senior manager at Websense Security Labs.

"So far, we have seen more than 100,000 email messages like this, and counting."