Have you received this DM? "Hey what's up with this bad blog thats going around about you?"
Last week a virtual friend sent me this "Hey what's with this post about you" Twitter Direct Message. I actually clicked the link, as I had believed there might be some bad feelings in the local area about my company. Of course I'm not telling you why - suffice it to say a competitor may not like my firm for some strange reason. So Google Chrome saved me from going to that site. w00t! Today two friends' twitter accounts were hacked. They're both very Social Media savvy.
I also received a call today from a lady who clicked the spammer's DM link and got through to that site. Lucky she didn't fill out the form that was there. I DON'T LIKE SPAM! This kind of spam is the worst kind. It plays on your emotions and draws you in - then steals your identity. The viagra spam emails never trick me - I'm not 60. I don't know why they continue to find their way to my inbox. But this new Twitter DMing is a little scary.
Here's one way to not get hacked: Only use https://twitter.com. Its the secure version. In fact, only go to sites that have a security seal or SSL (Secure Socket Layer) certification when in a public wireless area. Facebook has one. My blog has one. The cert's not owned by me, and you might get an "Error" if you try, but it works and is legit. This is only really necessary if you are using open wifi. If you're in a coffee house and browsing the interwebs and log in, you can be "Sniffed" by a FireFox plugin (there are actual sniffing programs too) that can view all your open tabs, and gain access to your logged in sites. If you normally have Safari, FireFox or Chrome (or God forbid, IE) manage your passwords for sites where you have to log in, ensure that you remove this saving feature for non-https sites. That 's' means the site encrypts your virtual transactions, thereby making your password very hard to learn.
If you get hacked - and you're a business - you need to contact all of your clients and apologize. Then you need to give them the name of a very good internet guru (or this blog post) - and say that even you can get hacked - and if they don't want to get their sites and accounts compromised, they need to get some security in place. Suffice it to say that a guru I use had his twitter account hacked a couple months ago. It can happen to anyone. If it ever happens to me, I'll be referring you back to this post.
