Recent Twitter ‘scam’

Posted by Alexik | Posted in Virtual | Posted on 04-02-2010-05-2008

0

popping..

As I was browsing the web these days…I couldn’t help but notice the recent Twitter scam (or so it’s been called – which isn’t actually true – keep on reading).

The story goes something like this: some torrent site users got their accounts stolen through some bogus forums and websites (apparently those sites/forums had some backdoors/exploits which were used to steal the information). The peculiar thing is that most of those users used the same info (username and password) for their Twitter accounts.

Well, let’s be honest with this…who’d really want your Twitter account? What could I do with it? Ruin your VIRTUAL life? It never stops to amaze me that most people are now too fond and too tied up to their VIRTUAL lives to even notice what is and what isn’t important in their lives…I’m willing to bet that some would even commit suicide over a Twitter account (I know that some wouldn’t believe this, but let’s read some recent news about the “Avatar” movie and how several people committed suicide because of “the cruel world”).

This is not some cyber-terrorist thing as Twitter stated on their blogs and such, this is simple human stupidity. Some guy wanted to steal some torrent site accounts and probably sell them to someone else, and Twitter accounts came along (as we all know that people tend to be stereotypical – which includes setting the same username and password for more than just 1 account in their virtual lives)…

I am also reading that several companies conducted studies on how people set up their accounts on financial and non-financial websites. For example, 73% of the people in their survey used the same password as on their financial sites (internet banking, etc.) on some non-financial sites and 47% used the same usernames and passwords on both financial and non-financial sites. I can only say one thing…if people started to READ and PAY ATTENTION to any links, pages, etc. received in their e-mails…these things wouldn’t happen. Twitter is the least important things of those they lose…most people lose their credit card and banking info this way, and lose money, which literally hurts their REAL lives.

That’s the real problem, not the fact that some torrent site and Twitter accounts got stolen…because no one actually cares about that. That is not sensitive information, at least not for some of us. It might be vital for others.

Either way, before publishing this article…I have only one piece of advice for YOU people: READ and PAY ATTENTION :)

Enjoy!

Write a comment