Spammers stalk Twitter for unsuspecting users
IT security and control firm Sophos is advising Twitter users to be vigilant of suspicious accounts that have been using the service to build up databases of contacts in order to spread their spam messages. These spam accounts are recognisable as they tend to follow very large numbers of similarly named Twitter profiles.
Sophos was alerted by a Twitter account that was also following over a hundred other users, all with user-names containing "Graham" or "Honda".
"The people creating these accounts probably found the usernames by simply using the Twitter search engine for matching names," says Brett Myroff, CEO of regional Sophos distributor, Sophos South Africa.