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January 5, 2009

Phishing Scam Hits Twitter; Will it Become the Next MySpace?

This morning, I received a direct message from one of my Twitter friends. It was a very strange message. Check it out:

I clicked on the link, which lead to this:

I checked the Tweet stream of the friend who sent me the direct message. She said she had been fooled into following a phishing scam.

She wasn't the only one. Originally, the blogspot page directed people to another site which looked like the Twitter homepage. They signed in, giving away their user name and password. Of course, this helps spread the phishing scam via direct messages.

What really happened is that a mockup of the Twitter homepage was hanging out at a very bad URL. The good folks at Twitter captured this screenshot of the site:

These phishing scams hit MySpace pretty hard once it got popular. Now, it looks like we have to watch out for them on Twitter.

Phishing schemes kind of took the shine off the once popular MySpace. Looking back, I think it's one of the reasons I stopped hanging out on the social network. I saw so many messages that weren't from my friends even though it looked as though they were. I haven't noticed the same on LinkedIn or Facebook yet.

If phishing hits Twitter consistently, then it might just be their demise.

What do you think? Did you get an unusual direct message? Think phishing could ruin Twitter? Leave a comment and let us know your thoughts!

Posted by Nathania Johnson on January 5, 2009 8:27 AM

Comments

Naaah, it won't be Twitter's demise. Twitter is a very unique and fun little toy, and they won't lose me as a member. Twitter has been very proactive in dealing with the situation and anyone that gets hit at this point is just lazy. I would think that if you receive a direct message - you should be smart enough to know that you can't read it unless you are already logged in, and a huge flag red would rise if I was asked to do it again.

rondata January 5, 2009 11:05 AM

There's been at least some Twitter phishing around for a while, albeit not as common as it has been lately. What worries me more, though, is that for the first time ever one of my Facebook friends got phished last week (messages were posted on all her friends' walls saying to check out crazy photos of themselves on some website). Just be aware, people; just be aware.

Sarah Fowler January 5, 2009 12:25 PM

actually I've been getting quite a few bogus wall posts on Facebook of late...And I checked the main domain (wondering if it was a legit site that got hacked) and that had a copy of the Facebook login page. I hope it doesn't hurt twitter too much but time will tell. we all still use email despite spam so who knows...

Doug from Nullvariable Web Consulting January 5, 2009 12:27 PM

There was a lot of grumbling and warnings exchanged over the weekend about this - everyone was warning their followers about it

AussieWebmaster January 5, 2009 5:38 PM

January 5, 2009

Phishing Scam Hits Twitter; Will it Become the Next MySpace?

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