How to Avoid Twitter Phishing Scams

How many times a week do you get one of these messages in your Twitter DM inbox?

Hey someone is making very bad things about you…

Someone is saying nasty things about you…

Someone is saying something terrible about you…

Hey someone is making very bad blogs about you..

Hello some person is posting nasty rumors about you…

Hey someone is posting very bad things about you..

all of which are then followed by a link. I get about one a day.

Please! For the love of all that is holy, do not click that link.

Why?

Because someone is “phishing” out there in the Twitter Sea and that link is merely bait to hook you in and reel you out of the water and beat you silly with a spam hammer.

When I blew up about this on my personal blog, my blogging friend, Jayne, commented, “Hackers are the herpes of the internet.” I wish I’d thought to write that. It’s perfect.

Another friend of mine recently clicked on a phishing link and here’s what happened to her:

1. Her Twitter account was hacked (e.g. someone, or something, probably a bot, figured out her password and got access to her Twitter account)

2. This pesky bot then used her Twitter account to immediately send out 15 DMs (direct messages) to other unsuspecting Twitter account users.

Don’t let this happen to you.

How to Avoid Twitter Phishing Scams

1. Do not click any unsolicited link in a Twitter DM.

2. Make sure you have a strong password for your Twitter account. Weak passwords are all lower case letters. Stronger passwords contains numbers. Even stronger passwords mix upper and lower case. The strongest passwords contain special characters (i.e. ! @ # $ % ^ & *  ).

For example, my Twitter password is LuvR&h8teR. Nice and strong. Nobody is going to break THAT one. No, sirree.

Hey! Where are you going?? Come back here! I’m not done helping you avoid getting scammed.