TwitterWatchDog.com

Over the past year Twitter watchdog has reported various phishing scams that are happening on Twitter.

Today, we found another phishing scam and wanted to make sure you are aware of it.
This scam promotes getting more followers.

Beware of Tweets that say the following:
* FREE MORE TWITTER FOLLOWERS!
* CHECK out this site, im a member of it, gets you more followers.
* WANT MORE TWITTER FOLLOWERS?
* Get more followers for free!

Byron Acohido with the USA Today Technology Live reported this phishing scam titled:

Tweets promising free Twitter followers is a phishing scam

A cyber gang continues to flood Twitter with an intensifying phishing scam that has allowed the bad guys to grab control of thousands of valid Twitter accounts.

“This is an extremely viral campaign that’s spreading rapidly,” says Patrick Walsh, chief technology officer at network security firm eSoft.

The criminals are sending out microblog postings — Tweets — from legit Twitter accounts suggesting that people click to a web service that will instantly get them 50 to 100 more followers. Visitors to the web page are asked to type in their Twitter logon and password to use the service for free.

Of course the information gets routed to the bad guys. They then use an automated program to instantly log on to the victim’s Twitter account and blast out a similar Tweet once every few hours. The shortened links carried in these postings are constantly tweaked to avoid being blocked or filtered.

“This is by far the biggest type of attack like this that we’ve seen, in terms of how many people are getting affected and getting their accounts hacked,” says Lee Graves, eSoft threat communications specialist.

For the moment, the gang appears to be intent on amassing thousands of valid Twitter account logons. To cash in, the gang can later access the accounts and blast out spam for worthless drugs or antivirus subscriptions. Or they could Tweet out links to infected web pages designed to turn over full control of a visitor’s PC to the bad guys.

Read more on this story here

Just remember, it’s not about the quantity of followers, it’s about the quality of followers. Don’t fall for this scam. People having success on Twitter are doing it by engaging, building relationships and providing value. Not by getting a mass amount of random followers all for the sakes of larger numbers whom they can broadcast to. Don’t get scammed.

Help your followers by retweeting this post!

Watching out for you, one tweet at a time. -Twitter Watchdog

@alferretti

@skeeterhansen

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