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
