Posts Tagged ‘website’

Beware shortcuts for getting more followers on Twitter

Published by pratyushkp on June 24th, 2011 - in Social, Technology

Image via Wikipedia

There are various different ways of getting more followers on Twitter.

The easiest method is to be a celebrity. It doesn’t matter if you tweet anything interesting, you’ll probably find a fair number of people will follow you regardless.

Alternatively, you could try to tweet something that people find useful or amusing or informative on a regular basis. If you put in the hours, write great tweets and be yourself then you may find others are happy to follow you and engage with you online.

But if both of those options sound far too tricky, you might be tempted to try the Twitter equivalent to a “get rich quick” scheme in your hunt for more followers.

Take these messages which are currently appearing on Twitter, for instance:

GET MORE FOLLOWERS MY BEST FRIENDS? I WILL FOLLOW YOU BACK IF YOU FOLLOW ME - [LINK]

If you are tempted to click on the link, you will be taken to a webpage which offers you a service that promises hundreds or thousands of new followers. Many different websites exist like this, here’s just two of the sites we have seen being used in the current campaign.

Although the graphics differ, the basic template of the site remains the same – including options to either pay for a VIP plan or try out a free service that promises hundreds of new followers.

I must admit I smelt a rat, and so I created a brand new Twitter account to see what would happen if I tried out the “free trial”.

Hello hello.. what’s this? The pages ask you to enter your Twitter username and password. That should instantly have you running for the hills – why should a third-party webpage require your Twitter credentials? What are the owners of these webpages planning to do with your username and password? Can they be trusted?

In the bottom right hand corner, they admit that they are not endorsed or affiliated with Twitter.

Now obviously I wasn’t going to handle over the password for my @gcluley Twitter account, so I entered the login details for the test account I had just created instead.

Before I knew it, I was presented with a familiar Twitter dialog box asking me if I really wanted to grant an application access to my Twitter account.

Common sense would hopefully tell you to step back at this point, and not allow the app’s authorisation. But if you’re hungry for new followers maybe you would continue, oblivious to the risks.

But sadly, some people are too keen for new followers. And they pay the price in the form of a message promoting the followers service is posted to their feed. In this way, the links can spread rapidly between Twitter users.

What surprised me the most however is that I started to get many more followers on my test Twitter account. Other, seemingly random, Twitter user began to follow my test account in huge swathes and my account began to follow seemingly random people in return.

Although this may seem like a good thing, it isn’t. After all, the rogue app has now made your account follow scores of seemingly random Twitter users – if you have no interest in what they have to say, you’re going to find that pretty irritating.

Furthermore, if you’re just playing a numbers game on Twitter you’re fooling no-one but yourself. It doesn’t actually matter how many people in total follow you on Twitter – what’s much more important is how many people are listening to what you’re saying on Twitter.

It’s no good, for instance, if you have five million Twitter followers but there aren’t actual people sitting behind them, reading what you have to say.

In other words, these “get more followers fast” apps are a waste of time. You’re not interested in what random people are saying on Twitter, so why should random people care about what you have to say?

Furthermore, whose to say that some of these new people who you are following are not cybercriminals, planning to tweet out malicious links or spam messages in your direction?

Twitter has published information on its help pages which describes the dangers of these “Get More Followers Fast”-type websites and apps.

So, what should you do?

Well, if you fell for the trap and granted the rogue application access to your Twitter account, revoke its rights immediately by going to the Twitter website and visiting Settings/Applications and revoking the offending app’s rights.

But don’t forget that you entered your username and password on the third-party website too! That means you should consider your password to now be compromised, and you should change it as soon as possible.

Remember – the fact that you gave them your username and password means they could in theory log into your account and read any of the information you store up there – including your email address and your private direct messages.

If you take no action against attacks like this, don’t be surprised if the unknown parties who now have control over your Twitter account use it to commit crimes or cause a nuisance.

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

  • Following Is Easy (problog.weddingwire.com)
  • Are You Ready for Promoted Tweets to Appear in Your Main Twitter Stream? (blogworld.com)
  • How to use Twitter to market your company (premierlinedirect.co.uk)
  • Beware shortcuts for getting more followers on Twitter (nakedsecurity.sophos.com)
  • Hours spent on Twitter? Don’t click on scam spreading virally on Twitter (pratyushkp.wordpress.com)
  • Twitter Launches Follow Button for Websites (blogoholic.in)
Tags: , Dialog box, , , New People, , Randomness, , , Very Important Person, , ,

BeautifulPeople dupes media with Shrek virus publicity stunt

Published by pratyushkp on June 21st, 2011 - in Social, Technology

Image via CrunchBase

BeautifulPeople.com, the dating website which claims to only accept members who pass an attractiveness rating, is claiming in the media that it has been hit by a computer virus.

According to a press release issued by the website, it was hit by a virus called “Shrek” that made it possible for “30,000 ‘ugly’ people to invade the site.”

The story has been widely reported by the likes of The Guardian, The Telegraph, Fox News, The Daily Mail and many other media outlets.

Ermm.. is it April Fool’s Day? My suspicion is that this is more likely to be a publicity stunt by BeautifulPeople than to have any basis in truth, and the world’s media are falling for it.

Here’s what Greg Hodge, MD of BeautifulPeople, had to say in the press release:

"We got suspicious when tens of thousands of new members were accepted over a six-week period, many of whom were no oil painting."

"We responded immediately, repairing the damage from the 'Shrek Virus' and putting every new member back into the rating module for a legitimate and democratic vote. The result is that we have lost over 30,000 recent members.

"We have sincere regret for the unfortunate people who were wrongly admitted to the site and who believed, albeit for a short while, that they were beautiful. It must be a bitter pill to swallow, but better to have had a slice of heaven then never to have tasted it at all."

It’s a fantastic piece of chicanery, of course, designed to boost awareness of the dating website, get them many thousands of pounds of free publicity with little risk of damage to their reputation.

The website explains that it hasn’t needed to inform any computer security firms about the malware as it is being “investigated internally”, and a “former employee.. placed the virus before leaving the team” and “despite wreaking havoc with the application process, member privacy and security was never breached.”

Phew! So, lots of publicity for the website but nothing for current or future members to worry about then. How convenient!

The company has certainly run imaginative PR stunts in the past, such as when it ran a campaign making members re-apply if they had “let themselves go” over the Christmas festivities. The dating website’s PR agency has been upfront that that initiative was designed to:

"provoke media attention with a controversial press release... to attract more hits and applications, [and] to generate extensive global coverage."

Sure enough, it won them a “Best Global Campaign” award at the CIPR Awards in 2010.

My bet is that BeautifulPeople has just come up with its latest publicity stunt – and you know what? It’s worked.

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

  • BeautifulPeople dupes media with Shrek virus publicity stunt (nakedsecurity.sophos.com)
  • Beautiful People Web Site hit by “Shrek” virus or just a PR stunt? (secboyuk.wordpress.com)
  • ‘Beautiful People’ Website Dumps 30K Members: Virus or PR Campaign? (blippitt.com)
  • 30,000 Shreks besmirch BeautifulPeople (go.theregister.com)
  • ‘Shrek Virus’ Scare Newest Troll Dating Site Publicity Con (inquisitr.com)
  • BeautifulPeople Dumps 30,000 Ugly Members (neatorama.com)
Tags: BeautifulPeople, Daily Mail, Guardian, Online dating service, Press release, , Publicity stunt, Shrek,

26,000 sex website passwords exposed by LulzSec

Published by pratyushkp on June 13th, 2011 - in Social, Technology

Image via Wikipedia

The notorious LulzSec hacking group has published login passwords for almost 26,000 users of an x-rated porn website.

The hackers compromised the database of the hardcore website (called “Pron“), exposing not only the email addresses and passwords of over 25,000 members but also the credentials of 55 administrators of other adult websites.

Furthermore, LulzSec drew particular attention to various government and military email addresses (.mil and .gov) that appeared to have accounts with the porn website.

That must be an embarrassing one to explain to the boss..

To add insult to injury, the LulzSec group called on its many recent Twitter followers to exploit the situation, by logging into Facebook with the email/password combinations and tell the victim’s Facebook friends and family about their porn habit.

It should go without saying that logging into someone else’s account without their permission is against the law in most countries around the world.

Fortunately, it’s reported that Facebook’s security team responded quickly to the threat – and reset the passwords for all of the accounts it had which matched the email addresses exposed. Of course, it’s still possible that those email address/password combinations are being used on other websites.

If anything should be a reminder to internet users of the importance of using different passwords for different websites, this should be it.

The danger is that once one password has been compromised, it’s only a matter of time before the fraudsters will be able to gain access to your other accounts and steal information for financial gain or, in this case, potential embarrassment.

If you believe there might be a chance that your username/password were exposed, or if you’re simply in the habit of using the same password for multiple websites – now is the time to change your habits.

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

  • 26,000 Porn websites passwords exposed by LulzSec (thehackernews.com)
  • 26,000 sex website usernames and passwords exposed by LulzSec (nakedsecurity.sophos.com)
  • LulzSec Targets Porn Websites and Releases User Data (linearfix.wordpress.com)
  • LulzSec hack porn website, find .mil and .gov logins (geek.com)
  • LulzSec Hackers Get Personal, Dump 26,000 Porn Site Usernames And Passwords (blogs.forbes.com)
  • Porn Site Users Beware: Hacker Group LulzSec May Have Posted Your Email Address (pcworld.com)
Tags: .gov, , , Internet pornography, Leet, , ,

Twitter Launches Follow Button for Websites

Published by pratyushkp on June 1st, 2011 - in Social, Technology

Image via CrunchBase

Twitter has launched a Follow button, enabling users to subscribe to the Twitter feeds of companies and individuals directly from their websites with a single click.

Previously, website publishers had to redirect users to their respective accounts on Twitter.com before users could opt to follow them. The new feature will likely encourage publishers to increase the number of “follow us” prompts on their sites, because they won’t have to risk redirecting their audiences off-site.

Users will still be able to preview profiles before opting to follow them by clicking the username next to the Follow button.

Those who are interested in adding the button to their own sites can set one up here.

Source :- http://mashable.com

  • Twitter launches its own follow button (theinformativereport.com)
  • Twitter Launches New Follow Button for Websites (hubspot.com)
  • Twitter Launches Follow Button for Websites (mashable.com)
  • Twitter Launches the Follow Button (techie-buzz.com)
  • Twitter Introduces New Follow Button (bloggersblog.com)
  • Twitter launches follow button for websites (telegraph.co.uk)
  • Twitter Follow Button Now Available, Allows For “On Page” Following (blogherald.com)
  • Twitter FINALLY introduces a Follow button for your site (thenextweb.com)
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