Stop the Twitter Spam
February 26, 2010
Recently there seems to have been stash loads of spam flying around twitter. My account succumb yesterday, along with two cabinet ministers, First Direct the online bank and the Press Complaints Commission to name a few.
Thousands of Twitter users from around the world have been receiving “direct messages” from their friends either saying “This you????” or “LOL this is funny” together with a web link that has been shorted and therefore disguised, which users are directed to click.
Once clicking the link, users are directed to what appears to be the Twitter login page. As with any spam the web address of this login screen is clearly not twitter.com. But the problem is on many mobile devices, including the Blackberry I use, there is no web address bar at the top of the screen, meaning I wouldn’t spot the incorrect web address.
If you input your information the hackers obtain your data, and then use that to continue the spread of the hack by sending out a direct message to all of this user’s contacts.
In a statement, Twitter explain:
“While simply receiving this message does not mean your account is compromised, if you do click through and enter your username and password, you’ll want to change your password. If you’ve received this type of spam from a friend, you may want to alert them to change their password.”
My frustration is that I seem to receive so much more spam on twitter than I receive on facebook or other social networking sites. I’d like to see twitter themselves help to deal with this situation. What are they doing to stop the spammers and phishers?
Entry Filed under: Technical/Gadgets, The web. .
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