Twitter hit by new phishing scam

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 22 Mar 2010 at 07:12

Twitter users are once again under attack from a phishing scam that attacks the direct messaging service.

The new scam sends a direct message to users containing phrases such as "You’re on here?" or "you should change ur photo u took here", along with a link to a rogue site. Users are asked to enter their Twitter username and password on the landing page, in a none-too-subtle bid to steal their login details.

Twitter was the subject of a similar phishing scam last month, when hacked accounts were used to send a message asking "This you?", together with a rogue link.

Users are often caught off guard by the short URLs used to send links via Twitter, which offer no clue as to the final destination. Twitter has launched its own URL shortener, which promises to display a warning message if a link is potentially harmful, but many Twitter clients continue to use alternatives such as bit.ly.

Users who receive such messages should ignore or delete them.