George, the virtual human or 'chatbot' - computer software designed to imitate people on chat networks. Could Facebook be vulnerable to attacks using 'virtual' friends?
Most of us have accepted one or two friend requests on Facebook thinking 'Do I know this person?'
But a demonstration of a new type of cyber attack shows that we could be putting our private details at risk every time we say 'Yes'.
Researchers at the University of British Columbia in Canada found a worrying way to evade Facebook's security measures entirely and harvest information from the site.
They created a team of 'fake' Facebook users who were able to harvest tens of thousands of email addresses and private information from unsuspecting users, without human input.
The 'fake' Facebook users, known as Socialbots, were software agents that can manipulate a Facebook account, pretending to be a human being.
They function almost like a social computer virus.
The 'Socialbots' created by the team began sending friend requests to random users.
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