General Tips for Avoiding Malware on Twitter

There has been a significant increase in the amount of spam on Twitter and as the site continues to expand, it is expected that spam will become more prevalent. There are a lot of ways spammers use Twitter, some of which involve motives for installing malware into your PC. If you are an avid Twitter user, you should be aware of some of the ways you can avoid a malware infection.

Click With Caution

A lot of Twitter users include shortened URLs in their tweets since they are limited to 140 characters. This means that URL addresses can be hidden behind a URL shortener. Hackers with malicious intent exploit URL shorteners by getting you to click on the short URL that ultimately takes you to a website that is infested with malware.

As it stands right now on Twitter, there is no way to tell by the shortened URL if it is a legitimate address or an address for a bogus website. Although services such as Tinyurl and Bit.ly allow you to view the link beforehand, the best way around avoiding malware at the moment is to only click on URLs from people you know or do not even click at all.

Use Discretion When Choosing to Follow

Think twice before you choose who to follow because spammers use a lot of unscrupulous techniques to gather a massive amount of followers that they can spam. If you end up following them, you increase the risk of clicking on something you shouldn't and getting hijacked to a site that is full of malware. You can also choose to block these individuals from your network of contacts altogether.

Twitter Spam Applications

There are a number of Twitter spam applications that are offered free just for the asking. Some of these applications include TwitBlock, TwerpScan, SocialToo, Topify, Tweepi, and TidyTweet. A lot of these applications allow you to see the spammer's statistics and profile before you click on the message and others filter out profiles that go over a certain number of followers since this is potential evidence of spam. A number of these applications also scan your list of followers and automatically flag the user and filter them out. Like an antivirus program, a Twitter spam application is worth the additional protection against malware.

Be Careful With Downloads

There are literally hundreds of social networking downloads being released for use with profiles. Make sure you do your research before downloading any of these applications because hackers are very good at disguising them to look like the real deal. Before you know it, they have asked for your name and password and infected your computer with malware.

Report Abuse to Twitter

Twitter provides specific instructions on their website on how to report spam and other types of abuse. They have a support site set up to handle abuse complaints with a way for you to identify the spammer and forward the address to @spam. Twitter has made efforts to suspend accounts and they are currently working on additional solutions for reducing spam on the service.