Legal Research

Lawyers beware: Don?t get phished on Twitter

By Dan Pinnington

The ABA Legal Technology Resource Center blog posted a warning this morning that all of us should pay heed to: Be Careful! Twitter Phishing Catches Lawyers, Too

What is ?phishing?? Email messages (or even tweets) that trick innocent users into entering their account information (for any account: a Twitter account, an email account, a bank account etc.) into a fake log in page, effectively handing control of their account to a malicious third party.

In the case of these recent Twitter phishing attempts, the usurper then uses the innocent individual’s Twitter account to send out spam, malware, and more phishing attempts via Twitter’s “direct message” (DM) feature.

Don?t think you won?t be fooled. While I don?t know of anyone hit in the latest round of Twitter phishing, last year one of my more tech-literate friends was tricked into revealing his MSN account login info (the people in his address book then got a message asking them to send him money so he could get home as he was stranded in a foreign country after having his wallet and passport stolen). And, an otherwise very bright lawyer I know was recently tricked into disclosing his bank account access info.

A phishing message will get your attention because it will play on the fear of your account being hacked. The phishing message and the fake login page will look very real. It is all too easy to be fooled by these scams. There is good advice on how to recognize phishing and how not to get tricked in the LTRC post. Please read it!

Cross posted on Avoid A Claim.com

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on March 01, 2010 (boomark / email).