Posts Tagged Twitter
European Election Twitter – How Social is Changing Opinion Polls
Posted by doates in Social Networking on May 24, 2012
In France it is forbidden to publish “by any means” the results of electoral surveys the day before and the day of voting. In the run up to this year’s presidential election the State prosecutor’s office were quick to remind news outlets and the general public that it would impose the €75,000 fine on anyone breaking this 35 year old law.
Determined not to be silenced, it didn’t take Twitter users long to come up with an alternative plan using the hashtag RadioLondres, originally a war time broadcast from London to occupied France during WWII to counter Nazi propaganda and deliver coded messages to the French resistance. Soon enough tweeters got into the war time spirit and made up their own humorous codes for others to decipher.
As the hours started to tick away on the final election day it soon became apparent that it wasn’t just politically minded citizens using the hashtag, but spammers and malware writers were also taking advantage of the number of people following Twitter’s trending topic. With Tweets abound with funny images – my favourite is the red Ferraris heading across the Swiss border, it was easy to see that caught up in the drama of the election many people would be tricked into clicking a bad link. According to a recent article in The Register cybercrooks are moving away from using email to carry out spamming and social engineering attacks and focusing more on social media, something that is very apparent if you’re a regular watcher of trending topics.
But what really got me thinking was what would be the legal implications for an organization of someone using their work laptop to post or retweet “illegal” content. And would it matter if they were in a different country? In the UK it would come under Vicarious Liability and it appears that France has a similar law under Responsabilité du fait d’autrui. Vicarious Liability makes an organisation responsible for the actions of its employees during the course of their employment and would include using work equipment and the fact that such an action maybe expressly forbidden is not necessarily a defence.
Fortunately it seems as if French Prosecutors have decided not to pursue the people that might have infringed the law, though quite how they expect to enforce it the future remains to be seen. Communication and broadcast technology has changed beyond all recognition from when the law was introduced in 1977 and rather ironically measuring social media sentiment, could be the new opinion poll.
Earlier that week across “La Manche”, the London Mayoral Elections were taking place. In the UK there are no such restrictions on reporting exit polls and one firm predicted the Boris Johnson and Ken Livingstone split fairly closely by analysing social media conversations. Though the methodology is still in the early stages to be as accurate as the current exit polls it’s interesting to see how social media is affecting our lives in sometimes surprising ways.
Where’s the line between private and public data?
Posted by Jae Kim in Privacy, Social Networking on March 23, 2012
In case you haven’t noticed, the line between private and public data seems to be disappearing. Traditional notions of privacy are broken down by the pervasiveness of social media. New Internet users, especially teens, use social media as their primary mode of communication. This next generation of Internet users communicate via SMS and Facebook, share photos on Instagram, and watch YouTube videos from their iPhones. Online communication and interaction is natural to them.
 |
| User education is needed on what is private and what is public and how to ensure the right option is chosen. |
However, if you look at the privacy aspects of data, there is a paradigm shift in how user data is treated. Email and instant messages are clearly personal data meant to be shared with people that we are directly communicating with. Back in the day, this would be analogous to sending a letter via the United States Postal Service and making a telephone call on a traditional landline. On the other hand, posts made on Facebook and Twitter are visible to just about anyone. When you publish a post, you don’t really know who will see it – much like tacking a piece of paper to a cafeteria bulletin board. There is no privacy.
The blurred line between public and private has led to questionable practices such as demanding Facebook passwords to screen employees or students. What today’s Internet users have to understand is that privacy is dependent upon the communication channel in use. Sending a message on Facebook (public) vs. sending an email (private) mean different things. Your intent, or expectation of privacy, should be expressed by your choice of communication medium. Yet, this is often not the case. Because users have become so accustomed to communicating via social media platforms, they forget that unless they specifically choose their audience (via blocking or setting up lists of who can see the data), what they post is in the public domain.
What’s interesting, and somewhat alarming, is that this same confusion over public and private communications is happening at the enterprise level. The line between internal communication and external communication is increasingly difficult to discern. In the age of BYOD – Bring Your Own Devices – most employees have a smartphone with LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter apps, among others. In fact, many individuals utilize apps that manage all of their social platforms in one handy location, such as Seesmic, or it’s too easy to confuse the line and make the mistake of sharing too much information or using the wrong medium to communicate with people. At the same time, the need for a flexible tool that supports both modes of communications with clear safety measures is that much higher.
Belbey Blogs: Blow Your Own Horn
Posted by belbey in Social Networking on March 1, 2012
The other day, on my daily walk at 7am, I saw a beautiful new cruise ship heading up the Hudson. She was surrounded by low flying helicopters, NYPD Fire boats spraying water a hundred feet in the air, and a flotilla of small boats. Magnificent.
I was unable to read the name on the bow and kept wondering, whose ship is this? As she passed lower Manhattan, she blew her horn. Nothing unusual in that. You see, many Captains sound their horns as they pass where the Towers fell, to honor the dead. However, instead of a long mournful blast, this was the first 5 notes of “New York, New York” (My- litt-le-town-blues). My fellow walkers stopped and clapped and smiled, and yet we still wondered, whose ship is this?
And then the Captain blew her horn again. The first seven notes of “When You Wish Upon A Star” rang out across Manhattan and New Jersey. Of course! Disney. And yes, when we looked more carefully, we could see Mouse Ears on the smoke stacks.
As it turns out, Disney’s newest cruise ship, the Fantasy, was making her maiden voyage from Germany, stopping in New York City to be christened, and then heading to her new home port of Port Canaveral.
So what does this have to do with social media? Everything.
We are beginning to shift the conversation from “No, we’ll be out of compliance” to “How do we do this well?”. We’ve learned social media is just another form of electronic communications and needs to be treated as such. We’ve also learned that once we have crafted our in-house social media policies and procedures, there are technology solutions such as Actiance Socialite, that we can trust to mitigate risk and keep us in compliance.
Now’s the hard part.
As marketers, how do we integrate social media into our corporate marketing strategy? After all, it’s just another tactic at our disposal. Over time, the tactics have evolved – public relations, direct mail, telemarketing, trade shows and events, email, websites — but, we’ve learned that to be successful, each marketing effort must reflect and reinforce the personality of the corporate brand and each point of contact must be part of a cohesive strategy. At the same time, we also must take the time to understand our audience so that we can version the message so that it resonates with our customers.
That’s exactly what Disney did. Through research, they uncovered the tradition of blowing the horn while passing the site of the World Trade Center. They then versioned the message to resonate with all New Yorkers by playing “New York, New York” and then reinforced their brand with a sound that is instantaneously recognized as Disney, “When You Wish Upon a Star.” Brilliant. And entertaining.
So using this example, Disney’s integrated marketing campaign generated press coverage by creating a special event, their website highlights the new ship (http://disneycruise.disney.go.com/), they tweeted about it (@DisneyCruise), and they are running sweepstakes and sharing video of the inaugural voyage of the Fantasy on their Facebook page (Disney Cruise).
How will you integrate social media into your marketing strategy?
Free speech alive and well in Kansas
Posted by nleong in Privacy, Social Networking on December 6, 2011
In an amusing tale of free speech and the Internet, Emma Sullivan, a high school senior from Kansas, tweeted that the governor of Kansas “sucked.” (Editor’s note: the author, Norv, is clearly in his element with this blog entry and “amusing” of course depends entirely on your point of view.) Instead of just dismissing it as an instance of free speech or teenage angst, Governor Sam Brownback’s staff went so far as to chase down the teen to extract an apology from her. Leery of the PR implications, the governor himself apologized for his staff’s over-zealousness. (Editor: OK, Norv, I see where you’re going with this one.)
What makes this story so relevant is the intersection of free speech, social media, and government intrusion. The proliferation of social media sites makes it easy for folks to chime in with their thoughts (good or bad) on everything from politics to sports to their favorite ice cream flavor. It’s the essence of free speech. However, where is the line drawn between protected and unprotected speech?
Google searches, monitoring software, and good ol’ fashioned word-of-mouth make it easy to find individuals and their comments railing on government. A teenager tweeting that the governor sucks is a much different ballgame than a parolee posting on his Facebook page that he intends to detonate some explosives at the federal building next week. However, it does raise the discussion point that when it comes to the Internet, does anything truly ever go away and will Emma still be remembered as the high school senior who… well, you see what I mean, I’m sure.
State and local governments are themselves still feeling their way on how best to leverage social media, which has emerged as a highly effective mechanism to engage with constituencies and to provide a transparent avenue for the exchange of information. Already, the states of Oregon, North Carolina, and Florida have specific guidelines on social media usage and other states are sure to follow.
So, while it may make you chuckle to hear someone say that their governor “sucks” (and mind you, I live in a state where the Governator did his thang for several years), the implications are real. Privacy is a misnomer when it comes to social networks; free speech is one of our most cherished rights; and the role of government in society will forever engender passionate debate.
The Facebooks and Twitters of the world just happen to represent new platforms for folks like Emma to express themselves.
Suck or not suck?
Lessons Learned from the Arab Spring
Posted by nleong in Social Networking, Web Security on November 16, 2011
While the Arab Spring was unfolding, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was taking note. For those in need of a refresher on Middle Eastern politics, it’s been nearly a year since mass protests starting sweeping through the Middle East and North Africa. Dictators fell, civil unrest ruled the day, and social media played a hand.
Huh, come again? What does Facebook and Twitter have to do with Middle Eastern despots? Well, given the reach of social and its ability to spread the word quickly and cheaply, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the protesters turned to social to galvanize the masses and “bring the ruckus.” And ya know what. . . it worked. Dictators fell in Egypt and Tunisia, Gaddafi’s dead, and Syria and Bahrain are moving towards more openness.
So, why the concern from DHS? Simple. What happened in the Middle East could happen in the States as well. Anyone remember Timothy McVeigh from the Oklahoma City bombings? Or the Unabomber? That’s precisely the type of activity DHS is worried about. The Arab Spring showcased the power of social media and it opened some eyes at DHS. Social networks can be a treasure trove of intelligence information, and now DHS is keen to leverage social to keep tabs on potentially dangerous elements and threats in society.
Welcome to the social age. Spy movies will never be the same. The next time you see Bond and Bourne, they might be checking their Twitter feeds to see where the bad guys are. Problem with this is “how do I know this information is accurate or reliable?” This conundrum pre-dates social media and has always been a concern for all the government agencies and departments dealing with intelligence.
As DHS is still trying to figure how best to monitor social networking activities without running afoul of privacy laws, now might be a good time for them to start looking towards technology as an ally in the fight against threats, be it cyber or old school. With a deeper understanding of today’s technological capabilities, DHS will be better able to formulate appropriate social media monitoring guidelines and perhaps avoid Oklahoma City and Unabomber-type tragedies in the future.
Failing that, give Jason Bourne a call.
Not all pictures are worth a thousand words
Posted by actiancefederal in Compliance, Social Networking on October 25, 2011
Charley Barth of the Department of the Navy would certainly agree with this subject line, contrary to the popular maxim of “a picture’s worth a thousand words.” That’s because since October 2010, the National Archive and Records Administration (NARA) has maintained that social media records should be archived, if the platform in question adds value, e.g., inviting public comment or other collaboration opportunities. Just taking a “snapshot” is not enough. In Barth’s mind, a snapshot is “just a picture of a page.”
Furthermore, being able to capture context of communications is critical too. The Federal Records Council’s social media subgroup found that public-generated content in a government forum was just as important as government-created content. So, capturing comments and entire conversation threads becomes ever more critical in the eyes of Barth.
Fortunately, there are technology solutions available today that can capture exactly that. Actiance Socialite can record content posted to Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, as well as comments, in context. Transcripts are presented in a conversational format such that, if you’re a reviewer or compliance officer, it’s very easy to grasp the nature of a conversation taking place over social media channels. No need to sift through a voluminous content management system or archiving platform to piece together a given conversation. Everything is presented logically and contextually, simplifying the separation of the wheat from the chaff.
There’s a whole lot of chatter and noise on social media – it gives us all a mouthpiece. Sometimes, finding that nugget of information, say, that thread on the benefits of stem cell research, can be challenging. But, with the appropriate solution, finding and presenting information seamlessly can make folks like Barth sleep easy at night. Governments worldwide have a reputation for inefficiency and a plodding nature, but with the right tools and policies, this one of ours might well become the poster child for how to properly and effectively record social media content without stifling government transparency and public engagement with its agencies.
Certainly, George, Thomas, and the rest of the Founding Fathers would be proud of that.
If I “Watch” it, is it an endorsement?
Posted by belbey in Compliance, Financial Services, FINRA, New Internet, Social Networking on September 26, 2011
Facebook introduced “Gestures” this week, modifying it’s “Like” button to something more neutral such as “Watched”, “Listened” and “Read”. This was done based on recent research by Facebook that revealed that users, particularly teenagers, hesitate using the “Like” button as they view it as an endorsement.
However, teenagers aren’t the only ones concerned by the “Like” button.
As Financial Services firms begin to draft their social media policies, many have been considering blocking the use of the “Like” button on Facebook and LinkedIn, or Retweeting on Twitter, for exactly the same reason: they want to avoid the appearance of endorsing a third party.
In fact, this has been the topic of many lively conversations during the Social Media Compliance Workshops we’ve conducted across the country (more on that soon). Compliance professionals worry about the risk of the appearance of endorsements and marketing professionals bemoan that blocking those features run counter to the conversational nature of social media.
Recent guidance from FINRA, including Regulatory Notices 10-06 and 11-39 and the earlier 07-59, Guide to the Web for Registered Representatives, has clearly warned that content from third parties may be attributed to their firm it it’s been “explicitly or implicitly endorsed or approved” (or per the SEC, has been “adopted” or become “entangled”).
And for Financial Services firms, that means that they would be responsible for that content as if it were its own. All of which means additional record keeping, oversight and supervision of the appropriateness of the content and retention of communications. Bottom line: the perception of endorsements mean additional risk, something that firms would like to avoid, especially in the beginning stages of using social media.
Therefore, for now, firms are shying away from anything that feels like an endorsement and they are blocking that “Like” button”. But, with the introduction of Gestures, will firms allow now the use of more generic terms like “Watched” or the equivalent when they are released?
So what’s your view – and your corresponding attitude to risk? Is Watched ok or a gesture too far?
Embracing Social Business
Posted by SarahActiance in Enterprise 2.0, New Internet, Social Networking, Trends, Uncategorized, Web 2.0 on September 12, 2011
Not long ago we blogged about the proliferation of mobile devices being used by the next generation of consumers to access the new Internet and its impact on financial services. This was the topic of a recent webinar and accompanying white paper from Forrester Research, and it’s a growing concern for all businesses – how to create safe, effective marketing programs using the latest social media platforms that drive business in a measureable way.
I recently chatted with Erin Traudt, Research Director at IDC and their resident guru on all things social (Michael Fauscette , you’ll have to forgive me, I’m not lessening your guruness with that comment 
) , about the marketing capabilities we recently introduced in Socialite Engage. Erin pointed us to two public Insight reports on the IDC web site that define a new kind of Social Business Framework:
“The democratization and socialization of media through the social web has turned anyone into a publisher, reporter and/or critic – subsequently redefining influence. The social customer, employee, supplier and partner each have a voice and the means to use that voice at scale. And people are listening.”
Source: IDC
IDC’s definition of social business is companies using emerging technologies (like Web 2.0 and social media) to make cultural and organizational changes to drive business. According to the IDC report, “Social Business Framework: Using People as a Platform to Enable Transformation,” there are four steps to implementing a social business:
- Identify the market factors driving the need for change to social business. Market factors can include such things as competition, brand awareness, customer behavior, and the economy,
- Recognize social objectives you want to accomplish and why they matter. Social objectives are linked to business goals and include such elements as customer engagement, employee empowerment, partner enablement, and supplier engagement.
- Establish social outputs to support those social objectives. These are the mechanisms you use to share, such as tweets and Facebook posts. Content creation democratizes the process so customers and partners can join the conversation, and you have to consider your community as part of social output, i.e. those individuals who are connected in some way, ideally around your brand.
- Determine the platforms and applications you need to achieve your desired social outputs. These are the software tools that you need to build, deploy, and manage social applications, such as Jive, Lotus Connections, and Facebook, and, of course, tools like Socialite Engage.
As part of your social business strategy, you need to adopt business tools that measure the impact of social output and social media platforms. According to the IDC Insight report Determining the Value of Social Business ROI: Myths Facts and Potentially High Returns, most organizations don’t even know how to calculate ROI for traditional projects, let alone for social business. Identifying metrics to monitor social media engagement allows companies to optimize customer acquisition, decrease customer churn, and create upsell and cross sell opportunities. But to do that, you need to be able to gain control of your social media program and measure the effectiveness and ROI of social media programs.
According to the latest Social Business Survey from IDC, there are five primary reasons that end users use social media as part of social business:
- Acquire knowledge and ask questions;
- Share knowledge and contribute ideas;
- Communicate with customers;
- Create awareness about company product or service; and
- Communicate with internal colleagues.
As part of your social business strategy, you need to think of the impact your social business program has on your social media audience in terms of:
- Reach: How extensive is your online footprint and are you being effective at building an online following?
- Impact: What part of your online community is active, pay attention to your products and messages, and influencing others?
- Yield: How much revenue or new business can you link to active members of your social media community?
These are all factors we took into consideration in when we designed Socialite Engage. We understand that for certain industries it’s essential to not only promote conversation with preapproved content, but to understand how that content performs in achieving social business goals, and which channels are yielding the desired results.
As a firm, as a business, to gauge the effectiveness of a social business initiative, you have to be able to track aggregated engagement across different social media platforms, determine who your key influencers are, and how those influencers are affecting your bottom line. And that’s what we’ve done with Socialite Engage. We’ve designed the means to identify and track key connections into Socialite Engage, and ways to track their influence. We’ve also built in analytics to determine how those connections are affecting business, which channels and messages are having the greatest impact on sales, lead generation, or whatever initiative you have determined will drive your social business.
Embracing social business isn’t just about improving customer relations and increasing sales, it’s about changing the very DNA of your people and the organization. Developing a social business strategy means empowering your people, your customers, your partners, and your suppliers with new tools that can impact your brand and reputation, as well as your bottom line. As a result, you need new tools to monitor the conversations and measure their impact. That’s what our next generation of social business engagement tools is all about.
Follow my experiences in beta testing Socialite Engage – as I endeavor to change the social behavior and the results of social collaboration of Actiance team members, partners and customers. You can watch it all here – at blog.actiance.com (or follow us on Twitter @SarahActiance and @Actiance)
FINRA 11-39: Applause, Missing Pieces, and Users
Posted by SarahActiance in Compliance, FINRA, Malware, Social Networking, Web Security on August 25, 2011
In the week that “retweeted” was officially added to the Oxford English Dictionary, after only two years of use, FINRA beats the retweet and issues new guidelines on social media, just 18 months after 10-06 hit our doorsteps, and “So, what do you read into 11-39?” is the question on the tip of everyone’s tongue.
As expected, a few points are clarified; the latest guidance has become more prescriptive in some areas and less so in others. (Puzzled looks abound, I’m sure.) If you’d rather hear more about this, than to continue reading, please join me on a webinar Wednesday, August 31st at 10am EST and I’ll explain.
I’ll start with the missing pieces of 11-39
What’s missing is the specific reference to individual social networking sites (I bet that’s not what you were expecting). And for this, I applaud FINRA. Examples were given in 10-06 – Facebook was mentioned twice (OK, three times if you look at the endnotes), Twitter four times, and LinkedIn just the once. Interesting that, in the conversations I’ve had with wealth management firms and wire houses, it’s LinkedIn that is the network of choice.
Why my applause though? Good job, FINRA, I say, because you’ve recognized that this world moves very quickly. Three months ago, YouTube was the fastest growing social network. Then it was Google+. And now, as Google+’s new member growth falls by 30% a day to 700,000, we’re not sure anymore. That said, LinkedIn has added 20 million new profiles since its IPO in May and now boasts 120 million profiles. Equally, since January 1, 2011, we’ve tracked 938 changes across Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter (yes, really!).
Good job, FINRA, because you’ve recognized that loyalty in our social world is somewhat limited. And, that just because Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter are today’s Holy Trinity of social, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they will be tomorrow.
What else is good?
It’s also good to see clarification on business versus personal commentary – this reinforces what we’ve been saying for some time, that “the regulator is interested in the communications related to the business and when the individual is representing the business” – the advice we have been giving since January 2010, is NOT to go against the Facebook rules (for instance) and set up two profiles, but take advantage of Facebook giving you the ability to set up a profile for personal use and a page for professional use, because contrary to a lot of public opinion, you CAN do this – as a businessperson, you can set up a specific page for your business use (drop me a note if you want step-by-step instructions). The SEC itself has stated that the content of an electronic communications determines whether it should be preserved. Just like the FSA out of the UK does. It doesn’t matter about the modality.
I do believe that, as an industry, we are perhaps being somewhat short-sighted by thinking that you can absolutely separate personal from business communications in the social world. I think the lines will continue to blur (increasingly so) as we become more accustomed to social. I do believe we’ll see more guidance on this as time goes on.
What else is new?
A proposed social media site must be approved in the “form in which it will be launched.” FINRA is talking here about the launch of new social media sites. So, if you’re launching a new design, a new Twitter feed, for instance, then the graphics that you’re using, the imagery, and the actual site – the “wireframes” in design parlance – need to be part of the approvals process. Third Party Data Feeds are referenced also. FINRA reminds us that the firm is responsible for checking the proficiency of the vendor of the data and its ability to provide accurate data – and it must regularly review for red flags.
Don’t Delete!
In reaction perhaps to the number of new companies popping up purporting to provide control and manage social media, FINRA specifically calls out details on technology that automatically erases or deletes content, stating that this precludes the ability of the firm to retain the communications in compliance with their obligations under SEA Rule 17a-4, yet further into the 11-39 guidelines, FINRA details more about the deletion of inappropriate third-party content.
It’s clear that a record of communications that doesn’t contain the full record is no record at all. However, I do hold to the fact that some content simply has to be deleted. I can’t control the 750 million other Facebook users out there (heck, I can’t even control what my little brother says on Facebook), and not all of those users have the same filtering mechanism that I have when it comes to content. I’ve deleted some friends and banned others because their language would offend my Mother, who to me, is my ultimate Facebook controller. In a corporate environment, I certainly don’t want the Actiance brand associated with profanity, racism, or a host of other comments, that we automatically delete through the use of our Urban Dictionary.
But we do record the fact that they were made. We also record the fact that they were deleted. We also record what the page looks like before and after the delete. Belt and braces. It might not be on the social network anymore, but it’s in the archive.
Mobile IS mainstream, and network barriers have crumbled.
And, it’s clear to see that the growth of mobile is having an impact; 250 million of the 750 million active Facebook users use the site through a mobile device – and on mobile, they’re twice as active. It’s clear that firms are concerned about mobile, rightly so, but equally, that FINRA is being sensible about how firms operate and how they do business. And, not all of us use devices that are firm-owned to post content and collaborate on social networks. That’s the way the world is changing. It’s one of the biggest challenges of today’s CIO: the personally owned device (whatever that might be – iPhone, BlackBerry, Droid, iPad, Tablet, Netbook). FINRA reminds us that it’s the communications, not the device, that is important.
The Users, the pesky Users…
FINRA gives an even bigger call-out about training and education. Human beings, I’m convinced were put on earth to create chaos. And in a social world, we can do this very quickly and very easily. (I should at this point, before our CEO, @Kambwani, sees this, reference that this quote is mine and mine alone.) But equally, you don’t just give 20,000 financial advisors access to LinkedIn and expect that they know what to do. In a lot of instances, there is a generational gap, injecting social into the DNA of individuals doesn’t happen overnight. FINRA is dead-right by saying that training is important, that certification is important. And regular training is not just a one-off, because people forget when they’re on a social network. They forget who they’re connected to, and who might see their content.
We are, after all, as human beings, ultimately fallible. And, we have technology in every other area of our business lives to protect us (anti-spam and security in the email world), to stop us sending our bank account details to Nigeria or our intimate personal details to hackers, Web filtering in the Web world to stop us playing online poker all day, and maybe even Actiance to limit our usage of Farmville to a mere 30 minutes a day. In other words, we use technology to protect us against technology. And it goes without saying that using technology to protect us from malware infection (our very own @jaeho9kim wrote about this recently right here on this blog), from ourselves, and from malicious intent.
I think I’ve rattled on quite long enough now, so I’ll leave you with this final set of questions. Did 11-39 answer your questions? Did it raise more? What do you think it didn’t cover? Tune in next week for our webinar – and for thoughts that I’ve gathered recently, when I got together with 60 Financial Services Marketing, Compliance, and IT professionals and asked them what they thought FINRA should issue in terms of guidance.
Twitter Malware: It’s Coming After You
Posted by Jae Kim in Malware, Social Networking, Web 2.0, Web Security on August 23, 2011
 |
| I may need to wear a shirt like this in the office. |
Most readers of this blog are savvy social media users. I would include myself in that category. Well, I would have until last Sunday.
Yes, I will come out and admit it for once. I got suckered into clicking on a Twitter malware link that was forwarded to me by one of my ‘trusted’ venture friends. Now that I got that off my chest (and demonstrated that I could be just as naive as thousands of users out in the Internet), I think I can talk about this incident somewhat objectively.
It turns out that this particular malware spreads by getting a Twitter user to click on the shortened t.co URL that’s sent via private message. When an unsuspecting recipient clicks on the link, it automatically sends the same tweet to all of the recipient’s followers as a private message. Very sneaky.
It was quite an embarrassing moment when I realized what just happened (I even had to update the new Twitter app to follow the link on my iPhone). Thanks to a couple of my co-workers and good Twitter citizen @DevonAlderton, I came to my senses only after a few hours had passed. Once a few seconds of disillusionment of my malware ‘detect-o-meter’ had passed, I regained my composure to delete all of my private tweets to all my followers (thank goodness I don’t have Kim Kardashian’s follower base) and took remedial action to shore up my defenses.
