Twitter is the new online fad, it’s the crazy these days and with a 55% increase in its userbase every single month it’s obviouse, twitter is taking over the world. Ok so maybe we exaggerate, but hey, 90% of those reading this post use twitter, and you’re all not aware of the dangers.

Phishers, scammers and hackers alike are always the first to take advantage of a new social network that’s exploding onto the scene, as is evident recently with many phishing attacks circulating around twitter. So here’s what you need to do to stay safe and to be sure you’re not tricked into losing your account!

Don’t use the same password on you twitter account and email address you registered with, if all else fails and you lose your twitter account to a phisher, you don’t want to lose your email too! Especially if it’s one that contains more important emails with login info to other sites, servers, maybe paypal details? Be very very careful.

There are many sites online now that grab your browser cookies and then extracting user info from it, sensitive information like email addresses, usernames and passwords so be sure to clear your browser cookies regularly.

One site that’s doing this is Stalk Daily now we wont link to this site and are asking you to please NOT visit it, as it’s run by phishers, a bunch of scum that are stealing peoples accounts on twitter in order to advertise their site and god knows what else. Instead, if you’ve been hit by these phishers please email phishing-report@us-cert.gov with information regarding their ILLEGAL activity. Explain how visiting their site led to them illegally accessing your twitter accounts and posting messages to advertise their services, which in turn attract other victims and so on.

Below is an excerpt from an article @KodeSpark wrote recently;

How do you protect yourself?

I can’t guarantee any of the methods outlined below but they should help

• Do not visit the account’s page or the website stalkdaily.com
• Do not browse twitter via your browser, use a client instead
• Do not follow anyone ‘till the worm account is banned
• Do not add the @ to stalkdailywoo if you tweet about it
• Warn your followers about the #Hijack and send a @reply to twitter management

These people need to be stopped, and you need to be careful while using an ever growing service such as twitter, make sure you’re using a unique password for twitter only, and never EVER give any service that is not affiliated with Twitter your username and password. This goes for any service online, phishers are weakest when you’re being careful and don’t get fooled. Always check the websites URL to make sure it’s the site you’re meaning to log into and never give out your info to sites you’re not 100% sure about.

Browse safely - @tonfue