Saturday 27 February 2010

My Twitter account was compromised - could yours be next?

I try to use my Twitter account for communicating to friends and business associates so imagine my horror when I woke up yesterday morning to find my account had been compromised and a direct message, the content being distinctly adult in nature, had been sent to a number of people following me. Why do some idiots have nothing better to do with their time than cause problems and create mayhem?

My apologies to everyone who received the message and my thanks to those people who replied saying they new it was not from me and advising me that my account was compromised. I immediately changed my account settings and scanned my computer and hopefully there will be no repeat.

So how did my account become compromised?

I believe it was as a result of a direct message I received from someone I was following which stated "LOL is that you?" and without thinking I opened it up to see who it was from as I did not immediately recognise the sender. A foolish thing to do, especially for someone who takes great care when it comes to virus and identity protection. So a kind word of warning to everyone out there - be careful it can happen to anyone!

Now, I can go back to concentrating on the Plough and Harrow Hotel - http://www.ploughandharrowhotel.co.uk/ which we succesfully completed the purchase of last Monday. So far it is proving to be an exciting time and we look forward to developing the hotel over the coming months and years.

Best Wishes

Robert Smith


 
Posted by Robert Smith at Saturday, February 27, 2010
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2 comments:

  1. Bruce G27 February 2010 at 08:45

    Just clicking on the link is unlikely to have done any harm. You probably don't recall the details now, but that link would have taken you to a dummy Twitter login page, controlled by the hacker. You then entered your username and password, thinking you were logging in to Twitter, but actually you were just popping your username and password into the hacker's database.

    Biggest worry is not that the hacker sent out rude messages from your account, but whether or not you have used the same password elsewhere (like, for example, your bank or email account).

    (Maybe you know this already, but others reading your post might not, so figured some more detail might be useful)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Robert Smith27 February 2010 at 09:10

    Bruce
    Your comments are much appreciated.

    Robert

    ReplyDelete

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