Posts Tagged ‘Spam’

Twitter account suspension spam could lead to data loss

Published by pratyushkp on June 22nd, 2011 - in Social, Technology

Image via Wikipedia

Have you received an email from Twitter saying that your account has been suspended? Did they ask you to re-verify your account by giving your details to a business partner?

Well, stop right there – and don’t do what the email says, because it’s a scam designed to steal your personal information and make money for fraudsters.

Naked Security reader Bayani was the first of our readers to send us a tip and tell us that they had been on the receiving-end of this particular spam campaign – but it looks as though it has been distributed quite widely via email.

Subject: Account Suspension

Twitter is currently upgrading at this time.We dont want to delete your account. Please Re-verify your account by entering your name, email, or zip by one of our business partners below

Click here to complete some free offers

Note All suspended accounts cannot be restored so please complete this offer within 2 days to avoid suspension

The Twitter Team

The emails don’t really come from Twitter, and clicking anywhere on the email (it’s actually an embedded image rather than text) will take you to survey pages which ask you to give away your personal information.

And, of course, you don’t have to be a Twitter user to have received one of these emails – although, hopefully, you’re unlikely to act upon them unless you are.

Source :- http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com

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Twitter Automates Link Shortening for Its Web App

Published by pratyushkp on June 8th, 2011 - in Social, Technology
Twitter logo initial

Image via Wikipedia

Twitter has announced that links shared on Twitter.com will be automatically shortened using the service’s t.co URL shortener.

Links of any length will be cut down to a tidy number of characters — 19, to be precise — and an ellipsis when the sender clicks the Tweet button.

Although each link is assigned a unique t.co link ID, the links will appear on Twitter as abbreviated versions of their originals so users always have some idea of where their next click will take them — a smart move on Twitter’s part given the number of URL-shortened spam or scam links that have made the rounds on the microblogging platform over the past year or so.

Still, you can expect to see plenty of other URL shorteners floating around Twitter — especially ones like Hootsuite that give their users a full analytics rundown for each link. Twitter said users can still use any third-party link-shortening services on Twitter.com.

Source :- http://mashable.com

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Visit the New Facebook? Hacker warning spreads like wildfire on social network

Published by pratyushkp on May 16th, 2011 - in Social, Technology
Image representing Facebook as depicted in Cru...

Image via CrunchBase

Facebook users are posting warnings to one another about a hacker operating on the network, using the offer to “Visit the new Facebook” to break into pages and kick out the page’s legitimate administrators.

Unfortunately the alerts do not include enough information to be useful, and members of the public may be unwittingly perpetuating a hoax in the belief that they are helping their friends, family and online chums avoid a nasty virus infection.

Visit the new Facebook warning

THIS NOTICE IS DIRECTED TO EVERYONE WHO HAS A PAGE ON FACEBOOK: IF SOME PEOPLE IN YOUR PROFILE OR YOUR FRIENDS SEND YOU A LINK WITH WORDS "VISIT THE NEW FACEBOOK '' AND THERE IS THE LINK BELOW, DO NOT OPEN! IF YOU OPEN IT YOU CAN SAY GOODBYE TO YOUR PAGE. IT'S A HACKER WHO STEALS YOUR DETAILS AND REMOVES YOU FROM YOUR OWN PAGE. COPY AND SPREAD THE WORD

Although there are many scams and attacks which spread on Facebook every day, no-one appears so far to actually have gathered any evidence that this one exists – and there is probably more nuisance being caused by users passing on the warning than by any attack which may or may not have happened.

Users believe they’re doing the right thing when they share warnings like this – but unfortunately they haven’t always checked their facts.

Please don’t share security warnings with your online friends until you have checked them with a credible source (such as an established computer security company). Threats can be killed off fairly easily, but misinformation like this can live on for months, if not years, because people believe they are “doing the right thing” by sharing the warning with their friends.

If you’re a regular user of Facebook, be sure to join the Sophos page on Facebook to be kept informed of the latest security threats.

Source :- http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com

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Facebook Dislike button spreads fast, but is a fake – watch out!

Published by pratyushkp on May 16th, 2011 - in Social, Technology
Image representing Facebook as depicted in Cru...

Image via CrunchBase

Don’t be too quick to click on links claiming to “Enable Dislike Button” on Facebook, as a fast-spreading scam has caused problems for social networking users this weekend.

Messages claiming to offer the opposite to a like button have been appearing on many Facebook users’ walls:

Dislike button on Facebook

Facebook now has a dislike button! Click 'Enable Dislike Button' to turn on the new feature!

Like the “Preventing Spam / Verify my account” scam which went before it, the scammers have managed to waltz past Facebook’s security to replace the standard “Share” option with a link labelled “Enable Dislike Button”.

The fact that the “Enable Dislike Button” link does not appear in the main part of the message, but lower down alongside “Link” and “Comment”, is likely to fool some users into believing that it is genuine.

Clicking on the link, however, will not only forward the fake message about the so-called “Fakebook Dislike button” to all of your online friends by posting it to your profile, but also run obfuscated Javascript on your computer.

The potential for malice should be obvious.

As we’ve explained before, there is no official dislike button provided by Facebook and there isn’t ever likely to be. But it remains something that many Facebook users would like, and so scammers have often used the offer of a “Dislike button” as bait for the unwary.

Here’s another example that is spreading, attempting to trick you into pasting JavaScript into your browser’s address bar, before leading you to a survey scam:

Offer of Dislike button leads you into posting script into your browser's address bar

If you use Facebook and want to learn more about spam, malware, scams and other threats, you should join the Sophos Facebook page where we have a thriving community of over 80,000 people.

Source :- http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com

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