Sometimes they claim to have found a funny picture of you, say that you look like you’ve lost weight, or that there’s a horrible blog going around about you.
Whatever the nature of the disguise used by phishing attacks on Twitter, the modus operandi is always the same. Scammers will send you a message, possibly from the compromised account of one of your Twitter followers, and use a social engineering lure to trick you into clicking on the link.
And that link will, inevitably, lead to a fake Twitter login page – designed to grab your username and password which can then be used to send out more spam, or to break into your other online accounts.
Here’s the latest attack, which arrives in the form of a Direct Message (DM) from one of your Twitter pals, claiming that they have searched for you on Google and found some “really funny stuff” about you.
so i googled your name and found some really funny stuff about you lol its archived here [LINK]
Would you click on the link? Well, if you were tempted to do so your web browser would end up on a fake Twitter page just waiting for you to enter your username and password.
And if you do enter your details, you’ve been phished. Ouch.
Hopefully, you’re not one of the many people who use the same password on multiple websites – otherwise cybercriminals might not just be able to send spam from your Twitter account, they may also have just been handed the skeleton keys for other parts of your online existence.
That could mean that scammers can now steal your personal information for financial gain.
If you found your Twitter account was one of those sending out the phishing messages, you shouldn’t just change your password and consider if you are using the same password elsewhere. It’s also a sensible time to look again at how you choose your passwords.
For instance, it’s important that you don’t use a word from the dictionary as your password. It’s easy to understand why computer users pick dictionary words as they’re much easier to remember, but as I explain in this video a good trick is to pick a sentence and just use the first letter of every word to make up your password.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/v/VYzguTdOmmU&w=500&h=311&rel=0]Password security is becoming more important than ever. Make sure that you’re taking the issue seriously, or suffer the consequences.
There’s some other house-cleaning you should do on your Twitter account too. Visit the Applications tab in “Account Settings”, and revoke access for any third-party application that you don’t recognise.
Follow me on Twitter if you want to keep up-to-speed with the latest threats, and learn how to protect yourself.
Hat-tip: Thanks to our friends at @TweetSmarter for bringing this latest scam to our attention.
