TOP 7 TWITTER SCAMS

TOP 7 TWITTER SCAMS

Twitter scams: Last year, The State of Security produced an essay for National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM) that offered tips on how users can safely navigate the world of social networking. Users giving too much information and posting revealing images, among other things, are harmful behaviours that could enable attackers to profile their accounts, according to our specialists.

These hostile actors could then start assaults aimed at phishing for users’ credentials and compromising their pages. To combat this type of attack, we advise users to keep the quantity of information they provide on social media to a minimum. However, not all attacks on social networking sites are so personal.

Spammers and fraudsters, on the other hand, frequently leverage typical desires of social networking users, such as the desire to build new connections or visit their friends’ pages, to take control of their accounts, money, and/or identities.

You could become a victim of a social media scam if you’re not vigilant. To avoid this from happening, it’s crucial to know what the most prevalent sorts of social media scammers are and which networks they typically target. We’ll start with a look at five of the most prevalent Twitter scams.

Scam Money Based The most typical Twitter con entices users by offering them the chance to earn money from home by tweeting about other people’s items. According to Joan Goodchild of CSO Online, those who fall for the scam pay a nominal sign-up fee to receive a “Twitter Cash Starter Kit.” According to Ryan Barnett, chief security researcher on Akamai’s threat research team, “the end user ends up forking out money to accomplish this work and they pay money to some rogue company.” “However, after you’ve paid for the CD, they have your credit card number and can continue to charge it each month.”

That’s precisely what they’re up to. Many victims have reported that after purchasing the starting kit, they were charged a monthly membership fee of $50 USD or more. In the majority of cases, the victims had little choice except to deactivate their credit cards.

Bot Spam Attackers do not always have to be directly involved in a scam. They can often utilise a bot to imitate a human and interact with potential targets.

Graham Cluley, a security expert and writer, gives us an example that has been adapted from a typical email fraud that dates back to at least 2009.

Users tweeted a photo of a scantily clad woman in this spam campaign. The image has a message encoded in it that reads, “Ur Cute.” Message me on [insert instant messaging platform here].”

Cluley stated, “You can see that (spammers) are going to greater and greater lengths to get you to their Website.”

If a Twitter user chooses to chat with the “lady,” the bot will follow a script and provide the user with a “free pass” to an adult webcam site. Users are asked to input their contact information and payment card information when they first visit the site. By handing away their information, customers risk becoming victims of identity theft and credit card fraud.

Not all bots send image-based spam, and these campaigns do not always lead to pornographic websites. Bot spam is a lot more complicated than that.

Indeed, with an estimated 23 million bots identified by Twitter in 2014, bot spam opportunities are practically limitless.

Scam related to follower ploys Some bots engage in the pay-for-follower scheme, which is the source of yet another Twitter ruse.

We’ve all seen Twitter profiles dedicated to providing thousands of followers for a cost. According to Scambusters, several firms claim to be able to achieve this by detecting other Twitter accounts that automatically follow back.

Others claim that they supply followers based on the buyer’s common interests.

Whether or not they have those skills, most pay-for-follower services are the same as those who sell email addresses to ads.

If you use one of these services, you risk being accused of assisting in the distribution of spam on Twitter, which could result in your account being suspended.

Scam of Illegitimate DMS Scammers love to attack every aspect of a Twitter user’s profile, including their inbox. Scammers use a hijacked account to send out direct messages that look to be authentic, according to Michael Krigsman of ZDNet. In essence, these messages direct users to bogus login pages that steal Twitter users’ credentials.

Once a fraudster gains access to a user’s Twitter account, they can utilise it for a variety of objectives, as detailed here.

However, Twitter scammers send more than just phishing URLs in their DMs. Researchers discovered 419 schemes targeting users’ inboxes this past fall.

(It appears that Nigerian princes, too, have Twitter accounts!)

According to Jerome Segura, a senior security researcher at Malwarebytes, he has never heard of 419 schemes on Twitter. He does, however, have a remedy for the social media platform.

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