blankEarly yesterday morning people started to receive messages circulating twitter that Twitter was beginning to charge money per tweet.  We’ve all heard the rumors before but this looked legit even linking to twitter’s website and then asking us to login to read it.

But here is what really happened!  You received an email from a friend, of which that friend’s account was compromised the exact same way you’re account is about to be compromised.  You follow the link from your friend, you do not quite make it out but the website you are sent to is NOT TWITTER (instead it is www[DOT]tvvilter[DOT]com/log_in/c/), you enter your username and password and hit enter sending your precious email address and password to the crooks, and go “Hmm! That’s odd, its asking me to login again?” as you are redirected to twitter’s real site really wanting you to login.

Sitting here looking at the facts of what has happened, one has to ask, what is so worth getting 20 years for in a twitter account?  The world may never know….

REACTION TIPS

If your account is comprimised you may need to follow these steps:

  1. Reset your password.
  2. Contact twitter, report that you were phished (they may have your account secret key and security answer!
  3. Ask twitter to reset your account’s credentials

If you come across this site:

  1. IMMEDIATELY LEAVE THE SITE
  2. Report the site and a possible spoof; some sites collect twitter authentication cookies that can be used to break into your site.