Curious how you get so many spam messages in Twitter? It’s not rocket science. I just got this one: “hi, i’m 24/female/horny… i have to get off here but message me on my windows live messenger name…” You probably did too. I know @mayhemstudios, @marshacollier and @TopBrokerOC did (thanks you three!).
So, how does this happen? Remember those websites you signed up at recently? You know, the ones that were “Rate your Twitter Followers Here” or “Remove SPAM from Twitter” or maybe it was “AdultsOnlyXXX.com.” Whatever the site, you entered your name and password (the same one you use elsewhere like Twitter) into the blanks, then clicked “Protect Me, introduce me, Go, Enter.” Next, your friends tell you that you just sent a Tweet saying “haha. This you????” or a link from Facebook of some virus laden porn vid. Now you know why.
Moral of this story…don’t enter your genuine password into a untrusted site. In fact, every site you use should have a unique password. Consider a password generator or a scheme like yourpasswordsitename or something else that can differentiate your password from the one you use on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc. I hope you are all changing your passwords RIGHT NOW at every site you care about and pay particular attention to your banking and financial sites. Do this often, mix it up, be clever, use numbers, caps/lowercase, characters, etc.
If you have sent me a suspicious spammy tweet, I’ll add you here: http://twitter.com/ericgreenspan/hacked-phished-spamming
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for the really good advice Eric. I have had a few of these spam direct mails recently and wondered why it happened. I shall endeavour to take your advice about the use of my passwords and change my present ones where necessary.
Thanks for sending this out Eric. Most people don’t think about this when they go to a site which asks for your Facebook or Twitter log-in. I update passwords every 2 weeks and use the first letters of a phrase I can remember that might be unique to something I did that week, making the first letter upper case and adding in a number, also specific to the event or week.
I just read about a password generator for the iPhone – Key Grinder. I haven’t tried it yet but it seems like a good, easy way to consistently generate new passwords.
http://betterelevation.com/2010/02/15/keygrinder/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+betterelevation+%28Better+Elevation%29