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Fake Twitter Blogs Phish Off Users’ Account Details

According to the news reports published in PCWorld on June 29, 2009, a fresh phishing campaign is reportedly attacking Twitter, a micro-blogging site.

The new phishing scam involves phishers or scammers dispatching numerous tweets (short messages) containing the missive that asks the recipient if all that was written about the person in the twit blog were true. The message also provides a link that leads to a subsidiary domain of www.twittersblogs.com.

Following this web-link, users lands on a page that though accurately resembles the actual login page of Twitter but it is a fake. In other words, it is a phishing site that prompts the user to submit his username and password.

Security researchers state that users, who are redirected to this phishing site and tricked into submitting their access details, unwarily place their info into hackers' and phishers' hands, letting them to use their Twitter accounts indiscriminately.

Actually, the researchers further indicate that while alert and vigilant Twitter users might manage to distance themselves from the latest phishing scheme, many others, who without giving second thoughts, might click on the URL link and put themselves into trouble i.e. have their accounts hijacked. Reports suggest that currently the phishing fraud is widely spreading across the entire Twitter network.

Meanwhile, some security experts tested the Twittersblogs website with the help of a mock account and found that the phishing message remained unsent even though the account's credentials i.e. the username and password, were entered.

Nevertheless, the most worrying part is that although there might be a halt to the phishing scheme, the online safety of Twitter members remains in danger since the links pointing to the phishing website continue to be scattered all over the Twitter network. Any user being late in clicking on the links or in submitting his details would have his account compromised, despite the missive not being re-tweeted.

Historically, Twitter has fought with similar phishing assaults a number of times and it is not the only social networking site to face them as Facebook too often encounters such phishing scams.

Related article: Fake Spam Mail Announces Australian PM’s Heart Attack

» SPAMfighter News - 7/14/2009

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