Don't be a twit
A couple of weeks ago we told you about a couple of people that landed themselves in legal trouble by publishing ill-advised comments on Twitter. The case of one of those errant tweeters has now made it as far as the High Court.
Now security software outfit Sophos is reporting on a spate of Twitter account hacks and the growing nuisance of Twitter spam.
The most sinister recent example is the hack of Andi Arief's Twitter account. Arief is a disaster management advisor to the Indonesian president, who regularly tweets disaster-related information. These are taken pretty seriously by the population of a country that has had more than its fair share of natural disasters in the past few years.
So when he apparently tweeted "Besok jakarta tsunami", which translates as "Jakarta tsunami tomorrow", people were understandably alarmed. Apparently his account was hacked, and a bunch of other malicious stuff was sent out. Sophos says this should serve as a warning to be careful with your password, and be careful about which third-party apps you allow to access your Twitter account.
Looking at some of the other related items on the Sophos site, TV presenter Kirstie Allsop - referred to by a Sophos blogger as "Plummy-voiced property crumpet" - has had her account hacked repeatedly. Part of the motivation for the latest episode seems to be to perpetuate some kind of public cussing match between her and Alan Sugar.
There's also repeated evidence of a growing wave of spam emanating from Twitter. Not only is there the apparent retweeting by accounts with pictures of totty in their profile, but there's the use of enticing messages and shortened URL's to get people to go to websites unwittingly. It seems the honeymoon period is well and truly over for Twitter.
