Pope Benedict XVI to resign – Twitter sex spammers exploit breaking news story

Graham Cluley
Graham Cluley
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Within seconds of the news breaking that Pope Benedict XVI was to resign, spam began to appear on Twitter taking advantage of the story.

Messages using the hashtag #pope – but with no connection whatsoever with the developing news story of the first Papal resignation for hundreds of years – have sprung up on the social network.

Most of the messsages are being posted from accounts which feature images of young women in a state of undress (rather than a state of distress, which is what you would devout expect Catholic followers of @Pontifex to be feeling right now).

What is happening here is what we see every day on Twitter – whether there is a Papal resignation or not.

Spammers scoop up the hottest trending topics on Twitter and use the popular phrases to sprinkle amongst their tweets – in the hope…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley is a veteran of the cybersecurity industry, having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky, or drop him an email.

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