Tens of thousands of Twitter users have been caught out in a scam after being tempted to click on links such as ‘This you????’ and ‘LOL this is funny’.
UK victims of phishing include Energy Secretary Ed Miliband and Leader of the Commons Harriet Harman who have both had automated fake messages sent from their accounts.
In Mr Miliband's case a tweet was sent out to his followers which read ‘hey, i've been having better sex and longer with this here’, with a link directing people to a website selling herbal viagra.
Other malicious links direct users to pages that look, for example, just like the Twitter home page, where unwitting Twitterers are conned into entering their login details and giving away their password.
Internet security experts have warned that cyber criminals will increasingly target social networking sites with ‘phishing’ scams, which can be used to sell products like viagra or to steal online identities.
Twitter wrote on their blog: ‘Over the past few days, we've seen an increase in phishing attempts and are working on resetting passwords for accounts that were affected.
‘While we've updated about these attacks via both @safety and @spam, we felt that it was important to post a more complete alert.
‘If you receive a DM (direct mail) or see a message with a phrase like 'This you??' or 'LOL is this you' followed by a link, please do not click through; there's a phishing site on the other side.
‘While simply receiving this message does not mean your account is compromised, if you do click through and enter your username and password, you'll want to change your password.
‘If you've received this type of spam from a friend, you may want to alert them to change their password.’
