Facebook has little reason to improve the security on the social networking site, according to experts.

"When you are trying to grow a social network as well as increase advertising revenue, security becomes not only a lower priority but sometimes a conflict of interest," researchers said.

There are many reasons that the social networking site has over 500 million users.

Other than being a famously valuable networking tool, Facebook has recently launched many applications such as the 'Work For Us' app. This lets companies, including those in the field of IT recruitment, post jobs and receive applications via Facebook.

As one IT journalist recently summed it up, "This really is where recruitment meets with a social network to become social recruiting!"

Many other sites have tried to do something similar. UK site 'When You Grow Up' (WYGU) has even launched a "Facebook for careers advice", which may help graduates embarking on or looking for IT careers. It offers a mix of "social careers guidance", development and e-mentoring.

But there are at least seven key security concerns that need to be addressed to keep users safe from future attacks, according to experts.

Firstly, Facebook is "rife" with pages promoting "knock-off luxury goods".

"If you actually get the product, which is a bit of a longshot, you are likely to find that the quality you expected from the brand is lacking at best," the experts said.

Shared apps is another worry as they could lead to "manipulated recommendations".

"Friends are recommended in a variety of ways, but a simply exploited example is through shared apps. Spammer accounts sign up for the same popular apps that real users do and before too long they are showing up in your list of recommended friends," the researchers explained.

Another app-related problem was fake apps which pose as information gatherers.

"Fake apps, malicious apps, misleading apps, whatever you want to call them, Facebook is overflowing with them," the experts said.

"Usually these apps are in the information gathering and spamming business, but we have found examples that link to malicious binaries."

Spam comes in many different forms.

"Affiliate spam", another problem for Facebook, is a bigger and bigger part of the typical user's incoming stream.

They encourage or need the user to share information with all their friends before being redirected to a "never-ending series of offers".

One issue not getting as much attention is photo-tagging for spam. With just each photo, a spammer can tag as many as 50 other accounts in a photo and have up to 200 photos in an album.

"There is not really a set of sextuplets, each with the same bikini picture as their personal profile picture," the experts say.

"Those are fake accounts. Certainly there are some images that will be common to multiple people, such as a team logo or newly released album cover. However, the fake accounts typically use images of a salacious nature."

Finally, there's "anomalous behavior".

"We've all seen examples of that friend who you never really talk to, and probably weren't that interested in 'friending' anyway, posting on your wall or messaging your account encouraging you to get a free iPad," the researchers concluded.

"Similar problems have been appropriately mitigated elsewhere in messaging but social networks have a long way to go."