Sunday, October 9, 2011

Help! My Twitter account has been hacked!

Well, not my Twitter account. But many people have been saying this today. It is not the first time people's accounts have been hacked into as most of us know. Unfortunately for innocent, unsuspecting people out there, it certainly won't be the last.

Usually an application (you know those third party apps that want your username and password) has gotten access to a user's Twitter account. While some of these applications or websites use the account for good, such as finding certain statistics on a Twitter account, there are those third party sites that are made for bad things such as spamming people with direct messages. Today's direct message came in the form of "You might want to click on this site! People are saying bad things about you here" or something to that effect. When a user clicks on the link, he is prompted to enter his username and password for access to what the user is lead to believe is juicy gossip about him online. Unfortunately, by entering in his Twitter username and password, he has just given access to this site to use his account to spread other similar direct messages to all his followers.

Sites like this are similar to the email messages that one might get with an attachment from someone you know with a message of "Look at the program I made for you!" When a user clicks on it, the file opens, scans the address book, and now all of his address book receives this same email.

Some people have no life. I know.

Here are some steps to fix your Twitter account if you suspect it's been hacked. The most common way to know if your account has ben hacked is if you get someone asking you "Did you send me a DM?" If you know you did not send the DM (assuming you did not drunk DM someone....in that case, there is no security for drunk behavior. Sorry about your luck.)then your account is likely hacked.

Do no despair. The fix is easy. Remember how you gave someone (in this case a site) your login id and password? So just change your password. The site will not be able to authenticate on your account again and the spam messages will stop.


If using Twitter from a smart phone, every client is different. RTFM:)

Otherwise if you are using Twitter off of the website itself, just click on your profile name on the upper right hand corner of the screen. When the popup menu comes up, click on settings. Click on the password tab. This is where you change your password in Twitter. Don't forget to save your changes!

THe losers who create sites that get login information for bad purposes are getting smarter. But the users can get smarter too by at least knowing what to do if they are attacked in this way.

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