14 DAY TRIAL // Security researchers warn of an ongoing spam campaign, which tricks Twitter users into giving hackers access to their account and exposing their personal information by promising them free iPads.
"Here you can get free IPAD http://tinyurl.com/[CENSORED] just register," the rogue messages sent to users via Twitter's Direct Message (DM) feature reads.
Users are likely to receive this spam from their friends or people they know, because direct messages can only be sent to recipients who follow the sender.
However, this is not a problem for this scam, since its propagation routine involves gaining write access to the accounts of its victims.
Users following the spamvertized link will be taken to a page which claims that people who agree to test iPad apps as part of a market research, will get to keep the device.
This is obviously not true and users who fall for this trick will only end up exposing their sensitive personal information and financial details.
The rogue page informs users that the first step to become an iPad tester involves giving the website access to their Twitter account in order to determine if they qualify for the position. But doing so will allow attackers to send spam messages to all their followers.
"No one is going to give you a $600 device for responding to a survey. No one who needs people to 'test' a popular product is going to solicit people to do so through an open-ended social media campaign," Chester Wisniewski, senior security advisor at Sophos Canada, says.
"If you received one of these direct messages from a friend please counsel them not to fall for this kind of thing. If you were one of the ones tempted, let's call this one a lesson learned and please be more careful in the future," he adds.
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