A Bad Tweet!
Well, I got my first hack, spam, Bad Tweet, whatever you want to call it.
I know this isn't the first time that Twitter has been hacked, or that scam Tweets have made the circuit.
In this case, I had a DM (direct message) from a very marginal Tweet-buddy - somebody who would never typically send me a DM. It said, "Hey, have you seen this?" followed by a link to http://videos/twitter (etc.).
While clicking the link (fortunately) didn't take me anywhere, and consequently I couldn't do anything stupid, the dumb thing did propagate and was sent, via DM, to all my followers. How utterly embarrassing!
I would never have known, but one of my followers sent me another DM saying, "I can't open this video. Can you resend?"
Well, I didn't send him any such message... but that got me curious. I looked at my DM "Sent" box, and sure enough, there was the evidence that my entire list of friends (who probably hate me now) had been sent the spurious Tweet.
The moral of the story: no matter what, be careful what you click on! Social engineering guarantees that we will trust our friends, people with whom we communicate regularly. But just as with email, even a friend who sends you something unexpected is suspect. So if you doubt it at all, don't click it.
By the way, another friend just phoned and said, "Did you send me a link on Twitter?" And I said, "No, and don't click on it!" and told him the rest of the story.
And now, as Paul Harvey said, you know the rest of the story!
I know this isn't the first time that Twitter has been hacked, or that scam Tweets have made the circuit.
In this case, I had a DM (direct message) from a very marginal Tweet-buddy - somebody who would never typically send me a DM. It said, "Hey, have you seen this?" followed by a link to http://videos/twitter (etc.).
While clicking the link (fortunately) didn't take me anywhere, and consequently I couldn't do anything stupid, the dumb thing did propagate and was sent, via DM, to all my followers. How utterly embarrassing!
I would never have known, but one of my followers sent me another DM saying, "I can't open this video. Can you resend?"
Well, I didn't send him any such message... but that got me curious. I looked at my DM "Sent" box, and sure enough, there was the evidence that my entire list of friends (who probably hate me now) had been sent the spurious Tweet.
The moral of the story: no matter what, be careful what you click on! Social engineering guarantees that we will trust our friends, people with whom we communicate regularly. But just as with email, even a friend who sends you something unexpected is suspect. So if you doubt it at all, don't click it.
By the way, another friend just phoned and said, "Did you send me a link on Twitter?" And I said, "No, and don't click on it!" and told him the rest of the story.
And now, as Paul Harvey said, you know the rest of the story!
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