Beware of Twitter Links: May Contain Malware According to Kaspersky

[morestar]

According to an article at news.cnet.com, Kaspersky has developed a tool that detects malware in Twitter links.

According to Kaspersky out of the 500,000 links they scan a day on Twitter, anywhere from 100 to 1000 are links to malware sites - about 26% of the Twitter posts contain links in them...

The problems users are encountering with respect to posted links taking them to malware sites is ever increasing and there are a lot of companies offering browser plugins like SecureTwitter which will apparently inform the user before they are taken to a link, if the site has been flagged as a malware site.

I still don't quite get the benefits from a simple user standpoint in using Twitter...I understand, from a marketing point of view, it's great for posting links to your site/services but besides that I still don't see the need to know Gene Simmons has just blown his nose on an airplane trip to Las Vegas...who cares?

[Uncle Dog]

Originally Posted by morestar

I still don't see the need to know Gene Simmons has just blown his nose on an airplane trip to Las Vegas

I blew my wages on a horse once.

However, it's really not very many (malware site links) is it - 0.2% of twitter links or 0.05% of all Twits (or whatever they're called)

Have to agree, not a Twitter.

[morestar]

ya but you have to admit you looked at some of the pretty girl links!

[bsnelling]

from a marketing standpoint I would be fine if some of these social media sites would disappear, so I would have more time to develop what I need to, which is a inviting web based storefront. To me these sites are unnatural.

[writerguy]

A month or so ago, I canceled and deleted my Twitter account. Haven't missed it at all, and I have no evidence that it has done anything negative to my life, my online experiences, or my online business. LOL!

And killing the Twitter account has eliminated one more of life's distractions and helped me focus on using my time more effectively.

Getting away from Twitter has been one of the easiest and best decisions I've made in recent months! LOL!

[astro]

All this is music to my ears! I have never seen the point of twitter, or seen any logic to the so called marketing benefits for the links within the posts. I suspect the power of them dissipated years ago because too many people used or misused them.

Can't see the point of Facebook for marketing either. Selling to friends usually involves discounting......

/astro

[bsnelling]

I like your signature, astro

Selling to friends is one problem. I rather keep friends as friends and not use them
trying to market my products every week or so.... that can get old too...

[ronchalice]

Originally Posted by morestar

...I understand, from a marketing point of view, it's great for posting links to your site/services but besides that I still don't see the need to know Gene Simmons has just blown his nose on an airplane trip to Las Vegas...who cares?

When you look at circulation numbers and web hits for E!, People magazine, TMZ, and just about anything else "celebrity," it's pretty easy to extrapolate that hundreds of millions of people on this little blue ball truly believe that if they watch a person on television or listen to their music then they (the fans) have some kind of right to know everything about them.

Unfortunately many people in the entertainment business don't do much to counter the concept, and the people who create the malware feed on it.

[Arctic Fox]

I use twitter quite a bit. I "follow" others whom I am interested in knowing about happenings in their life. I also follow quite a few business (@dell and @samsclub) and government entities (@nasa and @whitehouse) to get quick, sometimes unpublished elsewhere, news and information. Sometimes I read about people doing things that interests me which I hadn't thought of doing, or we may share a common interest that I'd like to read another's' point of view. It's just sharing information 140 characters at a time.


For marketing, I plan to follow Dell's lead very closely. I can sell things on my site, I can sell more things with Twitter being it's such a populated place. Offer enough incentives and discounts to the Twitter followers and you acquire a larger customer base just by word-of-mouth followings. I believe Google and Bing are working on getting searches through Twitter set up for more real-time finds; that will help on business and advertising, perhaps even ranking increases and such.

Of course, Twitter is just one step of many. I also am working on Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Blogger, and a few other [white hat] places of populace gatherings.

--------------

Now getting on topic, I have always seen a problem with malware/spyware/virii connections with links - especially with these new "short-URL" forwarders, but that's not new and not just on Twitter. My feeling is if someone decides to click on an unknown link from an unknown source, they get what they get. Darwinism in effect.

There are also Twitter applications one can sign up on that will gain access to your account, usually to follow thousands of people with just a simple click of a button. Some of these applications have turned and spammed thousands of people during the night while their owners are asleep. Again, if you just run off and give access to an unknown online entity, you get what you get. That's not just on Twitter, that's life.

[Terry Van Horne]

This will be a problem but it's easily fixed in much the same way as spam email using RBL and other lists. To even consider twitter and all of Social as contributing but a drop in an ocean of this activity is not really seeing the size of the total problem... huge in email! Twitter is the buzz word this month so the Media jumps on it like it's a big deal when it's really in fact insignificanrt in the scale of things. Remember there are a small number of apps and sites supplying shortners and there are just a few public shortners. So setting up noticfication and blocking among them is doable, when it's needed. The problem is IMO, at some point people realize how much data they are exposing using public shortners.

As to those who are dismissing it... easy to do... I did for a long time. Now I realize I'm just 3 yrs behind everyone who advised I not ignore or dismiss it as a flash in the pan. As I explore Facebook it is easy to see how people can use it to manage Social and Family activity.

[briguy]

Originally Posted by morestar

According to an article at news.cnet.com, Kaspersky has developed a tool that detects malware in Twitter links.

According to Kaspersky out of the 500,000 links they scan a day on Twitter, anywhere from 100 to 1000 are links to malware sites - about 26% of the Twitter posts contain links in them...

The problems users are encountering with respect to posted links taking them to malware sites is ever increasing and there are a lot of companies offering browser plugins like SecureTwitter which will apparently inform the user before they are taken to a link, if the site has been flagged as a malware site.

The main reason that I don't click on any of my DM's from people I really know!

P.s thanks for the "SecureTwitter" link, something I need!

[Tarzan2]

Originally Posted by briguy

The main reason that I don't click on any of my DM's from people I really know!

P.s thanks for the "SecureTwitter" link, something I need!

The latest update of Google's Chrome browser has some issues with opening PDF files in the browser window (earlier versions were fine and the fix for now is to disable opening in the browser window), but as far as contracting viruses from bad links, I have not had any problems at all while using the Chrome browser. I was reading a forum where there is one fellow who deliberately goes to any and all malicious sites he is aware of just to see if he can infect his machine while using Chrome. Seems that he is paid to find any vulnerability and if he gets his machine infected the Chrome team will study his machine in order to see if they can find a cure for the leak in the barrier.

[morestar]

That's pretty interesting wouldn't you say? I wish you could provide the source of that information...

[stbalaji2u]

Great innovation now i have the dilemma to switch to kaspersky for this feature.

[morestar]

Well I don't know if you really have to switch to Kaspersky do you?

[Tarzan2]

Originally Posted by morestar

That's pretty interesting wouldn't you say? I wish you could provide the source of that information...

I tried to find it again but was unsuccessful. Google Chrome has several forums and they have so much traffic that finding such an old post is almost impossible since I can't recall where I found that.

Google flags sites it considers to have malicious code on it and the browser will display a large red warning sign if it detects something it is concerned about. G. also maintains a list of known malicious sites. Hacked sites can be cleaned up and the webmaster can apply for re-evaluation.

Here is a link to one thread about the warning G. gives before allowing you to visit a suspicious or known bad site: http://www.google.com/support/forum/...63a23159&hl=en