I just read a post on Mashable about a malicious email circulating via Twitter.
The email, containing a worm, was originally reported to them by Symantec.
The worm comes as an attachment and is designed to harvest email addresses in addition to copying itself onto any removable drives you may have attached to your system.
If you think you may have been infected with this worm then run a full antivirus system scan and deal with any identified threats appropriately.
In order to avoid getting infected in the first place follow these three tips -
1. Make sure that any emails which appear to have come from Twitter are authentic by checking the sending address.
If the title of any notifications you receive from ‘Twitter’ say, “Your friend invited you to Twitter!” , or you receive an email with an attachment called ‘invitation card.zip’ then steer well clear as they are likely carrying the worm.
2. Run an up-to-date antivirus program
If your antivirus is kept up to date then you shouldn’t get infected in the first place!
3. Be wary of any emails from Twitter than look different to usual.
If an email looks different to normal then its probably a good indication that it is a fake, designed to look like the real thing.
Give it a wide berth and do not open it or run any attachments it may come with.
After yesterday’s post about hacked Twitter accounts I do wonder if the site’s popularity could ultimately lead to it’s downfall.
What do you think?
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