The report, which analysed Web threats for the month of January 2009, said social networking sites continue to be popular premises for cyber criminals seeking potential victims.

According to the Symantec report, January saw the emergence of e-mail spam which closely mimicked legitimate notification e-mails of two major social networking sites. These spam messages, which invited users to join a group on the social networking site, contained a link to a virtual group created on the site by the spammers.

This virtual group would be linked to a free blogging site before redirecting the user to the destination URL. Upon clicking this URL, users would be faced with the request to fill out a form collecting personal information. Information collected could then be sold to marketing companies or used for other malicious purposes.