How to make $300 a day!
By Benny Har-Even in Editorial
Posted in Twitter, Social networking on
In all the years I’ve owned a computer, I’ve always been quietly smug that I’ve never fallen victim to a virus or piece of malware.
Whatever the circumstances, I’ve been able to keep my internet connection alive, while all those around me have been losing theirs. I’m not saying that I’ve never caught anything, but I’ve either had a proper anti-virus program on there to pick it up, or had the common sense not to get caught out.
Up till now.
Damn you Twitter.
Last week, I got phished, good and proper. One evening last week I checked my feed to find a number of messages from followers telling me that I’d very kindly informed them that I had made $300 that day and that if they just clicked this link, I would show them how I did it. (I wouldn’t have minded so much had I actually made $300 that day, but I hadn’t).
What was odd was that I couldn’t work out it happened.
Even odder was what happened when I changed my password. It seemed to change back - all by itself.
I logged in, made the change, and then changed it on my iPhone and broweser clients. However, after a few minutes, I received a message that my password was no longer recognised. On a hunch I entered in my original password, and lo and behold, it logged me in. This happened three times, and was quite disconcerting.
My guess is that a wave of phishing attacks caused many to change their passwords all at once, and it confused the Twitter servers. That is a guess mind you. I’ve since changed my password once more, and it seems to have stuck.
Researching for this blog I think I found out what happenened. I was sent a link by someone whose account was clearly already compromised which said, “is this you?” - containing a link, which naturally I clicked. I can only assume it asked for my username and password, and being a prize chump, I entered them.
I blame beer goggles. Yes. Not my fault.
The problem is that thanks to the cleverness of portable identities - Facebook Connect, Google etc, more and more sites are asking for universal login details, which means its easier to let your guard down and not notice when something isn’t right. And scams such as ‘”Is this you” are more likely to work as they tap in to our vanity and ego. If someone asks if that’s you - your going to be clicking first and asking questions later. Though the question is likely to be, “How did my Twitter account get hacked?”
Well at least that’s my excuse.
Luckily almost everyone that follows me on Twitter is a headless female bot in a Bikini enticing me to ‘”check them out”. If they were topless maybe - but headless? Not so much.
So as Stan would say, “I’ve learnt something today folks.” And I hope you have too.
If for any reason you want to add to this motley collective, such as it is you can find me at http://twitter.co.uk/Blagmeister
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