How to safeguard yourself against twitter phishing scams (and much more)
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1. Never click a link in a DM (Direct Message), even from someone you trust. Other people you know may have had their accounts hacked and not even know someone, or some thing is using their DMs to spread spyware or malware. Resist the urge to click links.
2. Sign out of Twitter’s site using the ‘Sign out’ link on the upper right hand corner of the page. See this article at PCWorld for the the detailed reasons why.
In short, for your convenience, Twitter lets you stay signed in to your account by asking you to check a little box that says ‘Remember me,’ and when you check that box, the site places what’s called a Session Cookie on your computer. That Session Cookie contains your login info so the next time you go to Twitter’s site, it logs you in automatically.
If that cookie is present, and there’s malware or a worm on your computer that ended up there from a maliscious link you clicked on, the scammers don’t even need your username and password to access your Twitter account. The worm simply logs in with the Session Cookie.
Logging out of Twitter, clearing all cookies then not accepting the ‘Remember me’ thing whenever you log back in keeps that cookie off your computer. Sure, it’s inconvenient to have to type your username and password every time you log into the site, but it’s just a bit more inconvenient to have to clean up the mess after your account has been hacked.
3. Never use the same password and/or email address on Twitter (Or Facebook for that matter) as you use for things like your online banking, online credit card management, PayPal account, or any other important personal accounts.
Scammers know that most people are careless and use the same email address, username and passwords for a lot of their accounts. So if they get access to your log-in info on one account, they may try logging in to your other accounts as well.
USE DIFFERENT LOGIN INFO FOR ALL YOUR ACCOUNTS, NO MATTER HOW INCONVENIENT IT MAY BE.
4. Always use a good antivirus scanner on your computer and make sure it’s always up to date. Some good ones are (Google them) Norton, McAfee, AVG, NOD32 or Avast for Windows. ClamXav or Sophos for Mac OS X and ClamAV and Firestarter firewall for most flavors of Linux, like Ubuntu, Debian, Kubuntu, etc.
Don’t let anyone tell you that if you have a Mac or Linux based computer you don’t need antivirus or a firewall. No, those systems are not as likely to become infected by malware, but when they are, you still need an antivirus software. Using Microsoft Office on your Mac? You’re vulnerable.
5. Even though you now have antivirus and a firewall installed, they may not catch or clean up everything lurking on your hard drive. It’s a good idea to install additional software that scans your computer for old files or bits and pieces of things left behind that may or not be maliscious or may just be slowing down your machine.
I recommend CCleaner and Spybot search and destroy. Run them often and you’ll be surprised (and maybe even a little horrified) at what those programs will find and get rid of for you, especially the first time you run them. Your computer may run noticably faster and they should help to free up a good chunk of space as well.
6. And most importantly, surf responsibly. Stay away from crap like Limewire, Facebook games, anything that wants you to install software on your computer or plugins in your browser, movies that say you need codecs or a special player to view them, toolbars, etc. Most or all of those are not needed and they simply want to get their software on your machine. They may just want to show you ads but many are more sinister and work in the background without you even knowing what’s going on until it’s too late. And by too late, I mean things like, your bank account has been cleaned out, your identity stolen, huge charges on your credit cards or at best, your reputation on Twitter or Facebook irrepairably damaged.
The above post was not meant to be a comprehensive guide to protecting yourself online, but it’s a good place to start. If you have suggestions for anything I may have left out, please leave them in the comments below.
Be safe.
By admin on 14/11/2009
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