Sunday, February 21, 2010

Hi, Jack!

I love that scene in Airplane when the guy gets tackled in the airport. Too funny.

Sadly, that's not what this is about.

There've been a lot of issues with people's Twitter accounts getting hijacked with phishers of men (and women). I helped a friend out last night whose account sent a TON of DM's to her followers leading them to a bogus site, at which point they would be asked to enter their PW information for Twitter, resulting in  account hijacking.

Sometimes there is no rhyme or reason for an account hijacking, but in this particular case, I think the number of "connections" she had on her profile are to blame. Places like "wefollow," "poll pigeon," and others are granted permission to access our account when we sign up for things like horoscopes or take a poll or survey on Twitter. Some of us may not realize that's what we're doing when we click "ok" when asked if we want to share the information with our followers, but ultimately, you're sharing your PW with these unknown people. Some of them play nice. Some of them don't.

The easiest way to avoid a phishing scam is to protect your account. Change your passwords often and make them complicated to remember. Write them down or store them in your phone, if you need to, but "lucky123" is much easier to guess than "tL3nE48." And if you decide to allow connections by filling out a petition or voting in a poll, go in immediately after having done so and revoke access to the connection.

This doesn't guarantee you won't get hijacked, but it does dwindle your chances considerably.

Hope I've helped in protecting your account (and by protecting your account, I mean "saved myself the hassle of explaining this all to you after you've been hijacked.)

G'day, lovies!

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