Twitter, Facebook and MySpace are highly popular social networks. Unfortunately, there are always hackers who try to exploit the success of these networks for financial gain. Such is the case of Twitter, which has become an easy target for hackers to distribute spam.

How can you protect against spam in Twitter?

  • Disable the “followback auto” option. This way, you will be able to choose the people you want to follow.
  • Do not access all the links you receive. Make sure you know who you are following.
  • Follow the spam profile in Twitter: http://twitter.com/spam. You can find good tips here. For example, according to a recent post,  “If you gave your login and password info to TwitViewer, we strongly suggest you change your password now. Thank you!”
  • Install a complete security solution on the computer, preferably with an antivirus, firewall and phishing filter module.

If you follow these tips you will be protected against spam.

What type of spam could I have received?

The most common types are:

  • Trending Subjects Spam: This spam searches for popular subjects (e.g. Michael Jackson’s new movie, store discounts, etc.) to publish similar tweets with malicious URLs.
  • Tweet spam: This type of message comes from one user following another. Consequently, all the attached followers can see the tweet.
  • Direct Message: This direct message comes from a follower. Therefore only the recipient can see it.