NEW YORK (AP) - Facebook's beleaguered stock has lost more than half of its value since its initial public offering three months ago.

Facebook Inc. (FB) hit a new low of $18.75 before bouncing back to $19.01 - down 4 cents - in morning trading Monday. The social networking icon's much-anticipated IPO turned sour amid technical problems on the NASDAQ stock market and high expectations. The stock has not surpassed its $38 IPO price since its first trading day.


Investors are worried about Facebook's ability to grow revenue quickly, especially when it comes to garnering mobile advertising dollars as users flock to smartphones and tablet computers. There are also looming expirations of the IPO lockup periods. Lockups preventing many Facebook employees from selling stock expire this fall, potentially flooding the market with more shares.

• <p> When criminals hack a Facebook account, they typically use one of several available &quot;brute force&quot; tools, says Grayson Milbourne, Webroot's manager of threat research for North America. These tools cycle through a common password dictionary, and try commonly used names and dates, targeting hundreds of thousands of different email IDs. Once hacked, an account can be used as a platform to deliver spam, or -- more commonly -- sold. Clandestine hacker forums are crawling with ads offering Facebook account IDs and passwords in exchange for money. In the cyber world, information is a valuable thing.</p>
• <p> Commandeering occurs when a criminal logs on to someone else's account using an illegally obtained ID and password. Once online, they have the victim's entire friend list at their disposal and a trusted cyber-identity. The impostor can then run a variety of confidence schemes, such as the popular &quot;London scam,&quot; in which the &quot;friend&quot; claims to be stranded overseas and in need of money to make it home. The London scam has a far higher success rate on Facebook -- and specifically on commandeered accounts -- because there is a baseline of trust between users and those on their friends lists.</p>
• <p> Profile cloning is the act of using unprotected images and information to create a Facebook account with the same name and details of an existing user. The cloner then sends friend requests to all of the victim's contacts, who will likely accept them, as they appear to be from someone they know. Those accepted friend requests give the con artist access to his new &quot;friends'&quot;&nbsp; personal information, which can be used to clone other profiles or to commit fraud.</p> <p> </p> <p> As Grayson Milbourne puts it, &quot;Exploiting a person's account and posturing as that person is just another clever mechanism to use to extract information.&quot; Perhaps what's scariest about this kind of crime is its simplicity. Hacking acumen is unnecessary to clone a profile; the criminal simply needs a Facebook account.</p>
• <p> Cross-platform profile cloning is when a cyber criminal obtains information and images from Facebook and uses them to create false profiles on another social-networking site, or vice versa.</p> <p> </p> <p> Because the profile is often cloned to a social networking platform that the victim doesn't use, this kind of fraud may also take longer to notice and remedy.</p>
• <p> Phishing on Facebook usually involves a hacker posing as a familiar individual or respectable organization, and asking for a user's personal data, usually via a wall post or direct message.</p> <p> </p> <p> Often, users will be directed to click on a link. Once they do so, their computer may be infected with malware, or they may be directed to a website that offers a compelling reason to divulge sensitive information.</p> <p> </p> <p> A classic example would be a site that congratulates its victims for having won $1,000 and prompts them to fill out a form to collect their prize -- a form that requests credit card, bank account or Social Security numbers, which can then be used by the fraudsters.</p> <p> </p> <p> Also becoming increasing common, warns Milbourne: &quot;spearphishing,&quot; a practice that uses the same basic idea but targets users through their individual interests.</p>
• <p> In this common con, the scammers direct users via some sort of clickable enticement to a convincing, but spurious, Facebook log-in page. When the victims enter their usernames and passwords, they are collected in a database, to be used by the original scammer or resold to other criminals.</p> <p> </p> <p> Once scammers have a user's login information, they can take advantage of the identity through apps like Facebook Marketplace. Posing as a reputable user lets the scammer capitalize on the trust that his victim has earned to sell fake goods and services, or promote brands they have been paid to advertise.</p>
• <p> In affinity fraud, con artists assume the identities of people in order to exploit the trust of those close to them to steal money or information. Facebook facilitates this type of fraud because people on the social network often end up having a number of &quot;friends&quot; they actually do not know personally and yet implicitly trust.</p> <p> </p> <p> Criminals can infiltrate a person's group of friends and then offer someone deals or investments that are part of a con. They can also assume an identity by hacking into a person's account and asking their friends to wire them money, or give them sensitive information like a Social Security or credit card number.</p>
• <p> Few sites provide an easier source of basic personal information than Facebook. While it is possible to keep all personal information on Facebook private, users frequently reveal their email addresses, phone numbers, addresses, birth dates and other pieces of private data. As security experts and hackers know, this kind of information often finds its way into passwords or answers to &quot;secret&quot; security questions. While the majority of unprotected information is mined for targeted advertising, it can be a used for more pernicious ends such as profile cloning and, ultimately, identity theft.</p>
• <p> Most mass email advertisements are legal, if annoying. However, the growth of social networking has allowed for a new kind of spam called clickjacking. Clickjacking uses an advertisement for a viral video or article as an inducement to click on a link. Once clicked, the link sends the user to a page that tricks them into taking actions that they don't realize they are doing, such as sending an advertisement to all their friends' walls, buying an item via a concealed page, or revealing personal data.&nbsp; This has become such an issue for Facebook that earlier this year, the company&nbsp; teamed up with the U.S. Attorney General to try to combat the problem.</p>
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• <p> <strong> <style type="text/css"> .hpgText .interiorPromo {display:none;} </style> Oct. 28, 2003:</strong> Mark Zuckerberg hacked into restricted areas of <a href="http://www.harvard.edu/">Harvard University's</a> computer network to create Facemash, a website that pulled the private dormitory ID photos of students, then asked users to compare the pictures of two random students and chose which one was better looking. For the brief period before university administrators shut it down, it proved quite popular.</p>
• <p> <strong>January 2004: </strong>Zuckerberg began to write the basic software to create a universal Harvard social directory, TheFacebook.</p>
• <p> <strong>Jan. 11, 2004:</strong> Zuckerberg registered thefacebook.com domain. Then, on Feb. 4, TheFacebook launched at Harvard University. Mark Zuckerberg, right, and Dustin Moscovitz, co-founder, left; took a semester off in 2004 to further improve on TheFacebook website.</p>
• <p> <strong>March 2004: </strong>Initially restricted to Harvard students, TheFacebook expanded to other colleges, including <a href="http://www.stanford.edu/" target="_blank">Stanford University</a>, <a href="http://www.dartmouth.edu" title="Dartmouth College">Dartmouth College</a>, <a href="http://www.columbia.edu" title="Columbia University">Columbia University</a> and <a href="http://www.yale.edu/" title="Yale University">Yale University</a>.</p>
• <p> <strong>April 13, 2004:</strong> Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz, and Eduardo Saverin formed Thefacebook.com LLC, a partnership.</p>
• <p> <strong>June 2004: </strong>TheFacebook moved it's headquarters to Palo Alto, Calif., and received an investment of $500,000 from Peter Thiel.</p>
• <p> <strong>June 2004:</strong> Thefacebook incorporated into a new company, and Sean Parker, a co-founder of Napster, took the job of president for the growing business.</p>
• <p> <strong>September 2004:</strong> Facebook replaced its &quot;User is...&quot; prompt with a &quot;What's on your mind?&quot; question in the newly designed space for posting and sharing status updates called &quot;The Wall.&quot;&nbsp;</p>
• <p> <strong>September 2004:</strong> Harvard students Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss of ConnectU filed a lawsuit against Zuckerberg and other Facebook founders for allegedly stealing their idea for a college social network called HarvardConnection.</p>
• <p> <strong>July 19, 2005: </strong><span class="mw-redirect">Then-dominant social networking site MySpace was acquired by News Corp</span>., spurring buzz on the Internet about the possible sale of Facebook to a larger media company.</p>
• <p> <strong>Aug. 23, 2005:</strong> TheFacebook dropped its &quot;The&quot; and became Facebook. Purchase price it paid for the Facebook.com domain name: $200,000.</p>
• <p> <strong>September 2005:</strong> Facebook added networks for high school students.&nbsp; In December 2005, Facebook reached 6 million users.</p>
• <p> <strong>2005:&nbsp;</strong> Artist David Choe began painting murals at the headquarters of Facebook in exchange for company stock. Today, the shares he received are worth an estimated $200 million.</p>
• <p> <strong>2006:</strong> A <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash_flow_statement" title="Cash flow statement">cash flow statement</a> was leaked showing that Facebook had a net loss of $3.63 million for the 2005 fiscal year.</p>
• <p> <strong>Sept. 26, 2006: </strong>Facebook removed its restrictions and allowed anyone 13 and older with a valid email address to join.&nbsp; A news feed and a mini-feed were introduced, providing easier ways to see what your friends are up to.</p>
• <p> <strong>May 2007:</strong> Facebook Platform launched with 65 developers and more than 85 applications.&nbsp; Third-party developers quickly followed, building applications to integrate with Facebook. Games such as Farmville and Mafia Wars spread rapidly.</p>
• <p> <strong>July 25, 2007: </strong>A federal judge gave twin brothers Cameron (left) and Tyler Winklevoss, founders of ConnectU, and Divya Narendra until Aug. 8 to flesh out the allegations in their lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg. Those charges&nbsp; included fraud, copyright infringement and misappropriation of trade secrets.</p>
• <p> <strong>December 2007:</strong>&nbsp; Facebook reached 58 million users. With the successful addition of Facebook Platform and video, growth remained strong.&nbsp; Facebook charted a course toward becoming a general portal like AOL; meanwhile, the choice was made not to aim toward being acquired, as&nbsp;&nbsp; MySpace.com, YouTube and so many other tech startups were.</p>
• <p> <strong>June 2008: </strong>Facebook settled two lawsuits, <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ConnectU" title="ConnectU">ConnectU</a> vs Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg et al.</i> and <i>intellectual property theft, Wayne Chang et al.</i>, over <span class="mw-redirect">The Winklevoss Chang Group</span>'s Social Butterfly project. The settlements effectively had Facebook acquire ConnectU for $20 million in cash and Facebook shares valued at $45 million, based on a $15 billion company valuation.</p>
• <p> <strong>July 2008:</strong> The first Facebook iPhone app was released.</p>
• <p> <strong>August 2008:</strong> News broke that some employees reportedly privately sold their shares to venture capital firms at prices that gave the company an implied valuation of between $3.75 billion and $5 billion.</p>
• <p> <strong>October 2008: </strong>Facebook set up its international headquarters in Dublin, Ireland.</p>
• <p> <strong>February 2009:</strong> The &quot;Like&quot; social plug-in was added, allowing users to follow status conversations without having to say anything.&nbsp; The like button was instantaneously a hit. It's initial purpose has been widely misinterpreted as a positive approval button.</p>
• <p> <strong>August 2009:</strong> Facebook acquired FriendFeed, a real-time news aggregator.</p>
• <p> <strong>September 2009:</strong> Facebook said that its cash flow had turned positive for the first time.</p>
• <p> <strong>April 2010:</strong> Facebook announced the acquisition of photo-sharing service Divvyshot, and introduced Community Pages.</p>
• <p> May 31, 2010: <i>Quit Facebook Day</i> was an online event where users vowed that they would quit the <span class="mw-redirect">social network shortly</span> after widespread criticism was received on the new privacy controls rolled out in mid-May.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Paul1_53-0"></sup>&nbsp; Zuckerberg publicly admitted the company had &quot;missed the mark.&quot;&nbsp; An estimated 33,000 users quit the site.</p>
• <p> <strong>June 2010:</strong> Facebook employees sold some shares on SecondMarket at prices giving the company an implied valuation of $11.5 billion</p>
• <p> <strong>August 2010:</strong> Places launched, allowing users to share information about where they are in the real world, so friends can find each other.</p>
• <p> <strong>Oct. 1, 2010:</strong> <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Network" title="The Social Network">The Social Network</a></i>, a film about the start of Facebook, was released to theaters. The film, directed by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Fincher" title="David Fincher">David Fincher</a>, was met with widespread critical acclaim and won the Golden Globe and Critics Choice Best Picture for the Year. Mark Zuckerberg stated that the film is an inaccurate account of what happened.</p>
• <p> <strong>November 2010:</strong> Facebook added features to its mobile software for Android devices. The number of users reached just short of 608 million, with mobile traffic increasing. &nbsp;</p>
• <p> <strong>December 2010:</strong>&nbsp; TIME magazine named Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg the 2010 TIME Person of the Year.</p>
• <p> <strong>January 2011:</strong> Equity investors put $500 million into Facebook for 1% of the company, placing its implied value at $50 billion.</p>
• <p> <strong>February 2011:</strong> Facebook added 'Civil Union,' and 'Domestic Partnership' to its Relationship Status options.</p>
• <p> <strong>February 2011:</strong> Facebook application and content aggregator Pixable estimated that Facebook would host 100 billion photos by summer 2011.</p>
• <p> <strong>June 2011:</strong> Facebook partnered with Skype to add video calling as well as a new group chat feature.</p>
• <p> <strong>September 2011:</strong> Heroku joined forces with Facebook for application development using the Facebook Platform.</p>
• <p> <strong>Sept. 22, 2011:</strong> Facebook debuted the new <span class="external text">Timeline</span> user interface at the F8 Convention.</p>
• <p> <strong>October 10, 2011:</strong> Facebook launched its iPad app.</p>
• <p> <strong>December 2011:</strong> Membership reached 845 million users.</p>
• <p> <strong>December 2, 2011:</strong> New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg (left) Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg (center) and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), react during a news conference on the announcement that New York will be the center of Facebook's new engineering technology initiative.</p>
• <p> <strong>December 22, 2011:</strong> Facebook launched the new profile user interface, Facebook Timeline.</p>
• <p> <strong>January 24, 2012:</strong>&nbsp; Facebook announced that&nbsp; &quot;Timeline&quot; would become mandatory for all users.</p>
• <p> <strong>Feb.&nbsp; 1, 2012:</strong>&nbsp; Facebook filed paperwork to go public, seeking to raise $5 billion on Wall Street in the largest flotation ever by an Internet company.</p>
• <p> <strong>March 6, 2012:</strong>&nbsp; Facebook launches <em>Messenger for Windows</em>, which gives users of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7" title="Windows 7">Windows 7</a>&nbsp; Facebook services without the need for a web browser.</p>
• <p> <strong>April 9, 2012:</strong> Facebook announced that is will acquire the photo-sharing app Instagram for $1 billion USD.</p>
• <p> <strong>May 18, 2012:</strong> Facebook founder, Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, center, rings the opening bell of the Nasdaq stock market from Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. The social media company priced its IPO on Thursday at $38 per share, and beginning Friday regular investors will have a chance to buy shares.</p>
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