[PCWorld]

Post your comments for Security Alert: Twitter Porn Names Scam here

[AlohaArleen]

Aloha Aurora!
Great article! TWO big factors readers should note!
1) Deleting your post (or tweet) does NOT remove it from the public eye! After you delete a post it remains under the "search" feature of Twitter for 6 plus days! Also, Google indexes MANY tweets... forever! Just CHANGE ALL PASSWORDS ASAP if you have listed any personal information!
2) People who "play" this "twitterpornnames" game are primarily looking for one of two things: a) porn or b) more followers
Due to Twitter recently changing rules and placing additional limits, many are using trending topics to get attention and hopefully gain more followers.
Wonder what kind of followers you get playing "Twitterpornnames?" NO thanks!
Yes, you can tweet me. I'm @AlohaArleen on Twitter... It's likely I'm already following you.
Warmly,
Arleen Anderson

[Reader1]

While the story merits reporting, this is some of poorest writing I've seen online (which is saying something). Look up "then" and "than", for starters, then hit the grammar books, starting with "run-ons". Terrible.

[graphicsms]

I also noticed that a lot of people who have a lot of followers accidently follow-back their followers in bulk, without looking at who is actually following them. Adult websites, spammers, etc... The question is, what does this say about you, your company, and what you represent? Fortunately, Twitter comes with a BLOCK feature, so if you do follow these types of people, you can later block them and remove them from your follow list.
So even though there are ways to do away with others giving you a bad name, what does your Twitter background say about you or your company? Like any other social networking site, or even your own website, Twitter gives you the opportunity to expand your brand. Check out www.twittro.com for high-quality custom-made Twitter background designs. There is also a portfolio area so you can see the work that we've done.

[AuroraDizon]

Thank you for your comments. The grammar didn't get put through editing yet because this was something that had to be said right away. I posted it around 5 in the morning here which would be several more hours for someone at PCW in California. Normally it would be edited and I apologize for the grammatical errors. I hope you understand why it was posted in the timeliest manner that was possible.*

My Twitter is @AuroraDizon

So anyway I took a nap then I woke up. The topic here caught on fire and instead of playing the game on twitter many people were very quickly reposting the article. Yes, of course deleting your twitter will keep it on twitter for a certain amount of time in the search. However there is not much we can do about that if someone had posted their "twitter porn name". Anyway, so I woke up and there is another trending topic called "Scamming Twitter" mashable.com/2009/05/12/scamming-twitter-trends/ Ok I checked it out lol its another article where someone quotes me and then someone else who had claimed that PC World made up the twitter porn names for adsense revenue. The article writer said they sincerely doubt the latter, but it shows you how fast things move on twitter. Lol here's what I tweeted about it:

# AuroraDizon: Interesting back and fourth on how stuff gets knocked around on twitter. Be safe out there people, and do your research lol
9 minutes ago from web

# AuroraDizonAuroraDizon: PC World does not even use google adsense, that's for personal websites. Search past twitters its not hard + I don't get paid for articles
11 minutes ago from web

# AuroraDizonAuroraDizon: Scamming Twitter quoted my article then someone who said PCW made it up for google adsense is full of lols, does anyone do their research?
12 minutes ago from web

It is however very interesting on how twitter evolves.

Message was edited by: AuroraDizon - looks like the article has been edited for grammatical issues. Thanks

[DTNick]

That's, um, a pretty impressive piece of social engineering. o_O

Nice catch, Aurora!

[dantynan]

what's really interesting is that I fell for this too, and it turns out my twitter porn name is Aurora_Dizon.
what are the odds of that?
dt

[AuroraDizon]

Lol

[dantynan]

not to dump cold water on this story, but.... this strikes me as way too labor intensive for most phishers.
let's assume I've cleverly used this ruse to learn your mother's maiden name and that of your first pet. what would I do with this information? I'd have to go to your twitter profile, and hope you signed up under your actual name and put a link to your website. I'd still need a lot more information about you -- like your home address, date of birth, and ideally your social security number -- to do any real damage to your bank account or other financial records.
what else could I do? I could try to see if you have online accounts that use things like your pet's name for password retrieval. I can only think of one site I know that uses my pet's name (and not my first pet) of the scores of sites I use. I can only think of one other that asks for my mother's maiden name as part of my signup process (which I declined to give), and not for password retrieval.
I find it hard to believe that phishers -- who typically rely on automated tools to spray out millions of emails in the hopes of fooling a handful of people -- would go to these lengths to chase down a single victim. sorry, it just doesn't seem plausible to me.
cheers,
dt (aka the stripper, aurora_dizon)

[AuroraDizon]

Yea it is a lot of information for them to go through. It is also more information if they took the street name and ran a google maps to narrow down what town you grew up in/city you were born in for another question. Most people from what I've seen anyway don't even use their first pets name for their security questions, but mothers maiden name is a pretty big security question to make public. As far as the pet thing goes I've seen it on a few sites as an option, either as your pets name or your first pets name. Finding out someones birthday online is a relatively easy process especially when looking into social networking sites. Address's as well are not that hard to get a hold of. Credit card companies and so fourth commonly ask for your mothers maiden name. Theoretically with the proper answers to security questions one could in a variety of online accounts retrieve your birthday password address last four digits of your credit card from sites such as xbox.com, netflix, amazon, ebay etc. If one gained access to your email they could send reset information varying on the degree of security on the site to access your account. Most rely on people to click inaccurate links and so fourth, but we are for the most part smarter then to trust emails and sites that look suspicious, while people may post answers to their security questions in a game like this without thinking twice. It is more of a warning to everyone to be aware of the information they are posting publicly online.

[nannyboo485]

Calm down! Where have you guys been? Your porn name/soap opera name thing with your name/street/pet names, has been around forever, long before the internet, actually. Because I remember giggling about it in 8th grade with my girlfriends. And that would have been more than 20 years ago. It's not a new form of social engineering, it's an old funny that made it to twitter. Google "what's my soap opera name" and you'll see it out there a bunch. I really feel old now.

[KellyP]

The difference now is that your info is easy accessible in one place. When you played this as a kid, you were with friends you knew in peson, not playing over the phone with a bunch of strangers of all kinds of age ranges. What happens now, or could happen, is you do this on Facebook or MySpace with people who are maginal friends, some you met on forums or friended from somebody else's friends list. Think about it, they now know where you live, your birthdate, your mother's maiden name, if you use iTunes for example or Amazon, maybe what bank you use if you ever discussed credit card rates or some minor point about finances and accounts with anyone, etc. Someone on the shady side could breach your security with all that. They might have enough to get into an account and change a password. The thing is that you deal with a lot of people online in social networking now that you think you know well and you think are your friends, but are they really? And how private is your info to their friends who might read your friend's page and messages? Too much info gets out that you wouldn't have given out before. Mother's maiden name used to be something you kept to yourself, now I know several of my friends, because of stuff I've seen they do online. It's not so trivial of an issue as some might think when it's used as an identifier.

[KStrawn]

AuroraDizon, on 12 May 2009 - 08:33 AM, said:

Thank you for your comments. The grammar didn't get put through editing yet because this was something that had to be said right away. I posted it around 5 in the morning here which would be several more hours for someone at PCW in California. Normally it would be edited and I apologize for the grammatical errors. I hope you understand why it was posted in the timeliest manner that was possible.*

My Twitter is @AuroraDizon

So anyway I took a nap then I woke up. The topic here caught on fire and instead of playing the game on twitter many people were very quickly reposting the article. Yes, of course deleting your twitter will keep it on twitter for a certain amount of time in the search. However there is not much we can do about that if someone had posted their "twitter porn name". Anyway, so I woke up and there is another trending topic called "Scamming Twitter" mashable.com/2009/05/12/scamming-twitter-trends/ Ok I checked it out lol its another article where someone quotes me and then someone else who had claimed that PC World made up the twitter porn names for adsense revenue. The article writer said they sincerely doubt the latter, but it shows you how fast things move on twitter. Lol here's what I tweeted about it:

# AuroraDizon: Interesting back and fourth on how stuff gets knocked around on twitter. Be safe out there people, and do your research lol
9 minutes ago from web

# AuroraDizonAuroraDizon: PC World does not even use google adsense, that's for personal websites. Search past twitters its not hard + I don't get paid for articles
11 minutes ago from web

# AuroraDizonAuroraDizon: Scamming Twitter quoted my article then someone who said PCW made it up for google adsense is full of lols, does anyone do their research?
12 minutes ago from web

It is however very interesting on how twitter evolves.

Message was edited by: AuroraDizon - looks like the article has been edited for grammatical issues. Thanks

And who would think grammar couldn't be fixed? Thank you, Aurora Dizon, for doing so. Grammar is a very important part of my life. Okay, maybe some southern slang got into my speech from watching "Hannah Montana" all the time. But even when I was in fifth grade I was correcting others' grammar all the time. I had a Woodcock Johnson score of 18 on the grammar since fourth grade. And math? 12. I now am a high school junior, working very well on my academics. And especially here in California, where even the government isn't very well educated, I'm doing very well. I think it's a shame to see education fall through the cracks. Improving on our future is what us Americans should be focused on. And my spelling pretests in elementary school were always used as answer keys, and no, I wasn't cheating! I have such a wrote memory that I was able to memorize every spelling word from the minute the words were given!

This post has been edited by KStrawn: 13 September 2009 - 05:24 AM

[KStrawn]

KStrawn, on 13 September 2009 - 05:23 AM, said:

AuroraDizon, on 12 May 2009 - 08:33 AM, said:

Thank you for your comments. The grammar didn't get put through editing yet because this was something that had to be said right away. I posted it around 5 in the morning here which would be several more hours for someone at PCW in California. Normally it would be edited and I apologize for the grammatical errors. I hope you understand why it was posted in the timeliest manner that was possible.*

My Twitter is @AuroraDizon

So anyway I took a nap then I woke up. The topic here caught on fire and instead of playing the game on twitter many people were very quickly reposting the article. Yes, of course deleting your twitter will keep it on twitter for a certain amount of time in the search. However there is not much we can do about that if someone had posted their "twitter porn name". Anyway, so I woke up and there is another trending topic called "Scamming Twitter" mashable.com/2009/05/12/scamming-twitter-trends/ Ok I checked it out lol its another article where someone quotes me and then someone else who had claimed that PC World made up the twitter porn names for adsense revenue. The article writer said they sincerely doubt the latter, but it shows you how fast things move on twitter. Lol here's what I tweeted about it:

# AuroraDizon: Interesting back and fourth on how stuff gets knocked around on twitter. Be safe out there people, and do your research lol
9 minutes ago from web

# AuroraDizonAuroraDizon: PC World does not even use google adsense, that's for personal websites. Search past twitters its not hard + I don't get paid for articles
11 minutes ago from web

# AuroraDizonAuroraDizon: Scamming Twitter quoted my article then someone who said PCW made it up for google adsense is full of lols, does anyone do their research?
12 minutes ago from web

It is however very interesting on how twitter evolves.

Message was edited by: AuroraDizon - looks like the article has been edited for grammatical issues. Thanks

And who would think grammar couldn't be fixed? Thank you, Aurora Dizon, for doing so. Grammar is a very important part of my life. Okay, maybe some southern slang got into my speech from watching "Hannah Montana" all the time. But even when I was in fifth grade I was correcting others' grammar all the time. I had a Woodcock Johnson score of 18 on the grammar since fourth grade. And math? 12. I now am a high school junior, working very well on my academics. And especially here in California, where even the government isn't very well educated, I'm doing very well. I think it's a shame to see education fall through the cracks. Improving on our future is what us Americans should be focused on. And my spelling pretests in elementary school were always used as answer keys, and no, I wasn't cheating! I have such a wrote memory that I was able to memorize every spelling word from the minute the words were given!

Okay, I didn't mean to go off topic. See this post: "Astronaut Will Tweet From Space", reply 1. It certainly pertains to this topic, Aurora.