Culture

With an estimated 3.7 billion phishing emails sent in the past year it is no surprise that phishers have set their sights on Twitter. The latest phishing scam sweeping the ‘Net' is a spam campaign designed to look like legitimate Twitter notifications.

The emails take many forms: Some resemble messages from Twitter customer support claiming that the site has detected an attempt to steal the receiver's Twitter password. Others claim that the recipient has changed the e-mail address associated with their account and ask them to confirm. The links in these emails lead either to a downloadable "secure module" which the emails claim will protect the account but is actually malware or to a phishing site designed to steal the user's account information. Online pharmacy spammers have also taken to Twitter-formatted emails to advertise non-FDA approved pills.

Those these scams don't seem very threatening at first (I mean, how much damage can some do with 140 characters?) but the repercussions having your Twitter account hacked are HUGE! Many people use the same password they use for Twitter for many other online sites; from Facebook to online banking, people just aren't taking necessary precautions with their passwords. So, if you enter your account information into phishing site and you use the same password for Twitter as sites like Facebook or your email that may house more personal information, the scammer can potentially get into your other accounts.

These scams, discovered by Trend Micro, are easily avoidable if you are aware of them and know what a legitimate Twitter email does and does not contain.*

• Twitter does not send links to "secure modules".

• Twitter emails request confirmations include the new account information.

• Twitter emails do no describe or promote new services or products.

* Twitter email specifications via Trend Micro

Before you get hacked, consider taking these precautions:

• Always read emails completely and thoroughly before clinking though the links. It can take a while for news of the latest scam to reach your ears so keeping a vigilant eye on all your emails is a must!

• Use different, high quality, passwords for Twitter, Facebook, your email, and your online banking account. Secure passwords contain a random series of lower and upper case letters, numbers, and approved symbols. Such passwords should be more than 8 characters in length

• Consider and Identity Protection service. Investing in and identity protection service, such as Intelius IdentityProtect, can prevent a scammer that acquires your information from using it. This useful advantage could save you tons of time and money.

The mass ‘unfriending’ of Facebook has signaled the public’s dissatisfaction with the social networking site’s privacy policies. Social networking sites have provided millions of people with the ability to connect and keep up to date with friends and family around the world. From keeping up with friends from the past to helping you form new ones, social networking certainly has its purpose; as long as you’re ‘safe’.  Even with their ambiguous privacy settings and indiscernible security policies, no matter how insecure centralized social networks become, without a viable alternative the vast majority of users will not abandon sites like Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, and Bebo. Enter Diaspora*.

Diaspora*, the new craze in social media has already raised nearly $200,000 in pledges via the funding website kickstarter in less than one month. That’s 1792% of what the four guys from NYU requested to help them make it through the summer! But what makes Diaspora* worth $200,000? I mean, do we really need ANOTHER social networking site? No. This is why Diaspora* got our attention—Diaspora* promises to be a “privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all, distributed, free, open-source social network.”

What this means is that, as individuals, we will each be able to download the Diaspora* software (which the Diaspora* team hopes will go live in September) onto our OWN computers and from there, set up our OWN ‘seeds’ (mini social networks). Each user will be in complete control of what they send to whom. There will be no hub and no moderator. Add a user-friendly interface and a sleek design and everyone will want to have their own ‘seed’.  The privacy settings will all be automatic. With heavy encryption and full user control, Diaspora* has the potential to make social media privacy concerns a thing of the past.

As co-founder, Maxwell explains, Diaspora* will allow you to store all of your information (photos, comments, conversation threads) in one place: your seed. From there, you will be able to push pieces of that information out to whichever ‘friends’ you choose to share it with. After all, when we share data online there is no guarantee that, even if we delete it, that information won’t be available on someone else’s computer due to archiving. Since the internet is still relatively new, as far as anyone knows, the information we’ve posted across the social web will exist forever. But, as the Diaspora* project is set to prove, it doesn’t have to be that way. As the guys put it, “Sharing is a human value,” and everyone should be able to share what they like with who they like without fear of identity theft or damaging their reputation.

On April 14^th the Library of Congress sent out an official tweet that would stir the masses: "Library to acquire ENTIRE Twitter archive - ALL public tweets, ever, since March 2006! Details to follow." Twitter's millions of users send out more than 50 million tweets each day, all 140 characters or less. These snap-shots into everyday life are about to become part of human-kind's cultural history. The Library of Congress, whose goal has long been to preserve the "universal body of human knowledge", intends these posts, from Obama announcing his presidential victory to the musings of a teenager in the American Midwest, to provide insight to future generations about our culture.

The web-capture will include every public tweet since March 2006. Private tweets and direct messages will be exempt since they were never meant for public viewing. There will also be restrictions on the use of archived tweets. According to the Twitter blog, archived tweets will be available for internal library use, non-commercial research, and public display only after a six month delay.

For Tweeters this means that your every tweeted-thought will be available for future generations to study. But is this an invasion of privacy? The library of congress says ‘no', it is a preservation of culture. It will highlight only those tweets that it believes have strong cultural significance. The tweets are expected to capture a moment in history, similar to the letters and journals of the past, which the Library has been archiving for 210 years. Besides, each twitter user agreed to the terms and conditions of Twitter which means that Twitter, rather than the authors, own every tweet on the network. Twitter is therefore well within their rights to donate the tweets to the Library of congress.

As of now, there is nothing that can be done to have your tweets removed from this web-capture project if you, for whatever reason, want your tweets excluded.  However, you can set your profile to private to prevent any future tweets from being archived.

One possible effect of archiving all public tweets: Maybe people will start thinking before they post. "After all," as Fred R. Shapiro, associate librarian and lecturer at Yale Laws School notes, "your indiscretions will be able to be seen by generations and generations of graduate students."