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Twitter an Easy Target for Scammers, Security Experts Say

by Caleb Johnson on September 29, 2009 at 03:28 PM

Twitter scam stories are pretty easy to ignore these days; after all, they've become commonplace. Unsurprisingly, security experts say this trend isn't going away anytime soon, especially with the holidays just around the corner. According to USA Today, attacks that targeted trending topics and scams that were spread via direct messages swamped the site last week.

The scams continue to plague the micro-blogging site because it's simple to create a fairly anonymous account, tweets instantly appear all across the Web, and links frequently appear in shortened form, making it hard to know the link's true destination. Gerry Egan, director of Symantec's security response team, says it's not Twitter's fault. "This is simply another case where malicious attackers are using neutral technology as a means to their deceptive ends," he told USA Today.

Before you delete your Twitter account and run crying from the computer, know that there are ways to protect yourself from these threats. First, make sure your anti-virus software is up-to-date. Don't let scammers scare you into clicking on links to the latest "updates," either. Lastly, for those often deceitful, shortened URLs, there are some sites that unravel them (such as untiny). But, when in doubt, it's best to just avoid them completely. [From: USA Today]

Tags: scam, security, social networking, SocialNetworking, spam, top, twitter, url-shortener

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