Twitter Navigator » Phishing

News – State of Twitter Spam

admin — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 18:31:50 +0000

If you look spam up in the dictionary, youll find two definitions. Theres the canned meat and then theres the unwanted email. At Twitter, we see spamming as a variety of different behaviors that range from insidious to annoying. Posting harmful links to phishing or malware sites, repeatedly posting duplicate tweets, and aggressively following and un-following accounts to attract attention are just a few examples of spam on Twitter. Like it or not, as the system becomes more popular, more and more spammers will try to do their thing. Were constantly battling against spam to improve the Twitter experience and were happy to report that its working.

Percentage of spammy tweets posted per day is way down.

While the battle will never be over, were doing well on the front lines. Advertising Age recently profiled our Trust and Safety team noting the strong progress weve made keeping Twitter light on spam. With help from engineers on our Research team like @wfarner, weve moved the percentage of spam flowing through the Twitter network way down and counting. To help us battle spam, you can click the report for spam link on any suspicious profile page. This action alerts us about the account and blocks the account from following or replying to you. If you like, you can also send a tweet to @spam. For more information, read How To Report Spam on Twitter.

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Technorati Tags: duplicate tweets, Phishing, spam, spammy, twitter spam

News – Trust And Safety

admin — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:46:27 +0000

As Director of Twitters Trust and Safety team, a big part of my job is focused on the detection and prevention of spam and abuse. A couple weeks ago, Biz explained how Twitter users were being victimized by phishing scams spread primarily through links in Direct Messages. Basically, people click the link and bad things happen. My team can only detect these scams after malicious links have already been sent out.

Today, were launching a new service to protect users that strikes a major blow against phishing and other deceitful attacks. By routing all links submitted to Twitter through this new service, we can detect, intercept, and prevent the spread of bad links across all of Twitter. Even if a bad link is already sent out in an email notification and somebody clicks on it, well be able keep that user safe.

Since these attacks occur primarily on Direct Messages and email notifications about Direct Messages, this is where we have focused our initial efforts. For the most part, you will not notice this feature because it works behind the scenes but you may notice links shortened to twt.tl in Direct Messages and email notifications. Special thanks to @wfarner and @ram for building this service and helping keep us all a little safer!

News – Avoid ‘Phishing’ Scams

admin — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 18:17:34 +0000

Over the past few days, Twitter has been helping folks victimized by a phishing attack. Phishing is a deceitful process by which an attempt is made to acquire sensitive information such as Twitter usernames and passwords. The bad guys masquerade as someone you trust and may send you a Direct Message (DM) with a link. This DM may say something along the lines of, LOL that you?? followed by a link to a fake Twitter login page. If you enter your credentials on that fraudulent page, the phishers can sign in as you and trick more people.

Anatomy of A Phishing Scam

Generally a phishing attack against Twitter users breaks down to a three-part process. First, accounts compromised in the manner described above send out messages to all accounts following them. Second, accounts that are newly compromised send out more messages. Third, the scammers behind the phishing attack make an attempt at monetization by sending out spam links instead of links to a fake login page. We fight phishing scams by detecting affected accounts and resetting passwords. However, its better to stop them before they start.

Avoiding Phishing Scams

We designed the Direct Message system so that you could only get DMs from accounts that you choose to follow this cuts way down on spam and attacks. Our Trust and Safety team identifies and deletes spam accounts every day. Still, we recommend against indiscriminately following hundreds or thousands of accounts without having a look first. To learn how you can avoid falling victim to a phishing scam or if you have other questions about keeping your Twitter account secure, please read Keeping Your Account Secure at our help site.

For regular status updates on related issues. please follow @safety and @spam. There is also a Twi
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Technorati Tags: accounts, passwords, Phishing, phishing attack, Scam, twitter news, usernames