Since my earlier post warning about messages in your direct messages on Twitter the number of accounts that have been infected has continued to increase. These messages are sent to try and trap the unwary into clicking onto the shortened link and then trying to get the re-entry of passwords.
If you see such messages then please do send a tweet to the account telling them of their problem and suggesting a password change urgently.
The following is a summary of the advice that I have given to users who have had their Twitter accounts hacked.
Log-on to Twitter.com and change your password. I do suggest that the new one should not be similar to the old one, just in case. No-one has been able to tell me if changing the password stops the hackers access immediately but it does work eventually.
img class=”alignleft wp-image-1150″ title=”Settings on Twitter” src=”https://www.ianhardacre.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Settings-on-Twitter-150×150.jpg” alt=”” width=”151″ height=”154″ />
Secondly, while you have your account open on Twitter.com go to Settings and select Apps
And if your account is anything like mine you’ll have lots of websites and applications authorised to ‘connect’ to your Twitter account. Go through them and get rid of any that you do not recognise or don’t use (“Revoke Access”)
And lastly send out messages to your Followers> apologising for the messages and explain that you’ve been hacked. And have a look at your output stream and delete as many of the messages that you didn’t send as you can find.
A later post will suggest ways of avoiding such ‘dodgy’ messages in the future.