Everyone wants more Twitter followers. It’s kind of the name of the game. But if you see some tweets in your stream that proclaim: “OMG I just got over 1000 followers today from http://twittercut.com” — don’t be fooled, it’s a scam. The link takes you to a site that requests your Twitter login and pass. It then sends out this tweet to all your followers — a typical worm.
The reason to watch out for this is not only for the tweets of your friends and the retweets, but the links seem to have originated from the account twittercut — which was suspended. But then the links started up again from the account tweetcut (which has also been suspended). In other words, it looks like the perpetrators are just jumping from account to account to keep this thing going.
As a Twitter Search shows, the worm is spreading quickly. Do not give it your Twitter credentials.
If you do click through to the site, you’ll notice that they didn’t even attempt to create fake pages for the bogus site navigation. There is no “About” page, etc. Here’s the message on the page:
TwitterCut.com is the best place for you to grow your twitter network and gain a ton of followers. We recommend giving it a shot, it’s free and will help you get the followers you need. This system is brand new, so the quicker you get involved the better it will be, fill out the form below and get started right away…
The quicker you get involved! The play on getting more Twitter followers is a smart one — something that wouldn’t necessarily work for a Facebook’s worms of a similar nature. I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of these. Again, do not give this site your Twitter info.
I feel like I’m at blog.twitter.com right now
Isn’t techcrunch.com a CNAME for blog.twitter.com ?
That’s right. I’m sorry, my bad.
limelight
Yeah, that’s believable, there are so many services and bots to get people 1000’s of followers. I’m sure many people are going to get caught by this
funny thing is I see these things all the time in my stream…
We can only hope.
Tweet my twitter you twitting twat! Is this the future of insults?
Nice alliteration…
What is the point? They don’t get anything out of this, that I can see. Why are they spending so much time on energy on something pointless?
Well, it’s the same with virus and trojan writers – they don’t get anything out of creating and passing their creations around. Maybe for them it’s just that they get some sort of cynical joy out of seeing people fall prey to their creations. Thanks for the warning. Somehow I think the warning needs to go out not to those who are tech-savvy (i.e. those who are reading TC), but those who aren’t. As much as those of us here will say we won’t be so dumb to fall prey to such scams, there will be others who will.
They get your twitter password.
So lesson here > Don’t login to every other third party twitter tools
The tone of all of these posts on Twitter worms sounds like a public service announcement. That’s ironic, since I thought Twitter itself was supposed to be the way to get news…
140 characters is just a headline, I don’t know about you but I wouldn’t have got the details without some kind of blog or web page to follow.
Now it’s @tweetcutt.
Also, why bother reporting on this? If anyone IS actually stupid enough to post their credentials… well, let Darwin take care of it.
Google’s cache for http://twitter.com/JordanEmbry from 23rd May shows that this person was following 766 and had 250 followers. They seem to have some connection to http://www.sing...n-pictures.html
So far I have defended the quantity of twitter related posts, but I must admit, some of them never needed to be written. Like this one for example. twittercut is a dime a dozen of twitter spam follower increase “applications” that are out there that get pushed every day.
Calling it a worm is silly. The form button says “Tweet Now” which suggests to hopeful dopes using it that it’s going to tweet the message from their account.
Thanks for warning.
Should Twitter also start validating Apps like Facebook does?
“Need a worm? Here’s an app for that.”
I don’t want more twitter followers. I want better twitter followers.
More worms on twitter will be seen.
Thank you
lol i am the opposite i actually want quality followers. i manually approve everyone that tries to follow me.
This is a little bit dangerous, thanks for the warning. Twitter users should be careful with regards to their accounts.
Seriously just launch twittercrunch already so i don’t have to see this crap every other article. Then again this site would lose 90% of its content. Techcrunch has really taken a nose dive recently.
My account was hacked too… it more of phishing attacked probably due to security loop-hole of 3rd party apps. Probably Twitter should do something like facebook and verify the 3rd party apps.
More details: http://bawaal.com/blog/?p=295
“Everyone wants more Twitter followers. It’s kind of the name of the game.”
Don’t be delusional. Most people don’t give a dead rat’s ass.
PLEASE PUT ME OUT OF MY TWITTER MISERY!
looks like their latest username is @twiitcut
Firefox is blocking the site now. And the site has shutdown its ’service’. Good job.
Wow, right when you thought Tweet couldnt get any better! LOL
RT
http://www.priv...tools.echoz.com
“Everyone wants more Twitter followers. It’s kind of the name of the game.”
Narcissists are not “everyone.”
Thanks ! That is really useful….
Thanks for the warning! I wonder what was their reason to do this, is not like they’re getting something from this…
They have shutdown you are no longer able to add your credentials.
I haven’t got a Twitter account, but if i did, my password would be loadofplonkers
Have you tweeple all gone tweety!
1, Must agree with Pierre Fontenelle calling it a worm is silly!
2, Why w’d someone do this! What do they get out of it? Cash Cash and lots more Cash!
3, Why is it wrong? Well personally if it does add followers and not breach your account security, then its not!
However if it does not add any followers to your account and only to his then this is morally, ethically and legally wrong!
Also if it breaches your account any other time without your authority this is wrong and a risk, you should change your passwords freqently regardless! All and all there are some great apps for all sorts of platforms be it twitter, facebook etc first do your research maybe even test depends on how seriousness you are online!
Bussiness is business and you dont want your sites threatened or your personal info in this day and age so if your not confident the age old applies!
Here is a great site if you want to safely increase your followers! http://twellow.com the yellowpages of also http://twollo.com
heh wanting followers is like the myspace friend trains lol just dressed up in disguise