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Active Twitter users will have noticed an increase in unsolicited messages and links from unknown ‘followers’ in recent month. The links, invariably, lead to malicious software infection. Twitter, it seems, has had to up its war against malware* and other types of criminal activity.
Online security company Barracuda Networks’ latest report shows that despite a major ‘deviant account’ cull by Twitter in 2009, criminals have returned to the service in 2010. Twitter is now upping the ante in a war of attrition as it moves to rapidly detect bogus and criminal accounts that spread spam and malware.
Twitter says it is also making progress in discarding the thousands of no activity accounts in the ‘dead zone’. According to Barracuda, only 43% of Twitter’s users are ‘true’ users in that they have 10 or more followers, tweet regularly and follow more than 10 people themselves. It is estimated that 11% of accounts have no followers at all.
While Google was once the main [unintentional] distributor of malware, criminals and miscreants have moved to the other big search engines and Twitter. It is estimated that 1 in 1,000 search results leads to malware. The term ‘music & video’ is most likely to return a problem link.
Online security company Barracuda Networks’ latest report shows that despite a major ‘deviant account’ cull by Twitter in 2009, criminals have returned to the service in 2010. Twitter is now upping the ante in a war of attrition as it moves to rapidly detect bogus and criminal accounts that spread spam and malware.Twitter says it is also making progress in discarding the thousands of no activity accounts in the ‘dead zone’. According to Barracuda, only 43% of Twitter’s users are ‘true’ users in that they have 10 or more followers, tweet regularly and follow more than 10 people themselves. It is estimated that 11% of accounts have no followers at all.
While Google was once the main [unintentional] distributor of malware, criminals and miscreants have moved to the other big search engines and Twitter. It is estimated that 1 in 1,000 search results leads to malware. The term ‘music & video’ is most likely to return a problem link.
*Malware includes viruses, worms, Trojan horses and spyware.
