Twitter winning the war against scammers

LONDON - Twitter appears to be winning the war against scammers who prowl the microblogging website, after its beefed-up security team quickly removed the latest phishing scam to infiltrate the site this week.

The most recent scam spread around Twitter after users were duped into following a link to the domain Twittersblog.com, which showed a false Twitter homepage asking for login details.

Infected accounts immediately tweeted a link to Twittersblog.com, with the text: "omg!! is it true what they wrote about you in their twit blog?", which was rapidly spread among followers.

The scam is similar to previous phishing swindles to strike Twitter, such as the Twittercut scam, which tweeted out a link to Twittercut.com, with the text: "OMG I just got over 1000 followers today from Twittercut.com"

In the past, Twitter has been slow to react to such scams, allowing the infected accounts to continue tweeting for a number of days before removing the links and posting a warning on its official blog.

However, Twittersblog.com was snuffed out before any major damage could be done, with all links removed before the day was out, without a mention on its blog.

As Twitter gains an upper hand against scammers, the phishing attacks are becoming more sophisticated in order to sneak past Twitter's security team. Some are already taking advantage of the website's 'Trending Topics' list, which draws curious users to click unknown links.

Last week, the name 'Alan Turing' topped the trending topics list, which when clicked provided a link that installed malware on unsuspecting users computers.

Twitter is not alone in its battle against scammers, Facebook and other social networks are also regular targets for similar schemes.

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