Identity Theft News

Scammers go phishing for Twitter passwords

Friday, September 25, 2009

One of the internet's fastest-growing social networks was targeted once again by crooks, who this time were looking for Twitter log-on credentials.

Twitter supports direct messaging between users, in addition to its more famous microblogging features, and it is this functionality that cyber criminals used in the recent scheme. Targeted users received messages saying "ROFL this you on here?" and included a link to what appeared to be a video sharing site, but was actually a false Twitter login page where they were asked to provide their login and password. The scammers then use the information provided to send the same message to everyone on the affected user's contact list, and the process starts again.

Social networking blog Mashable said that it had received multiple reports of the scam in progress, which was first reported by an independent blogger who received one of the malicious direct messages. Experts say that phishing scams of this type are particularly insidious because the messages can appear to be coming from friends of the target user.

This is not the first time in recent weeks that Twitter has been the venue for cyber criminals. Pyramid schemes promising rich rewards for posting advertisements on Twitter accounts are now commonplace.ADNFCR-1765-ID-19379608-ADNFCR

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