Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Spam is Not A Tasty Treat

Monday morning, like most mornings, I grab my droid and check a few messages before getting ready for the day ahead.

Besides the 20+ emails that arrived in my email inbox, there where 45 new spam messages that arrived in my email that Gmail caught while I was sleeping.

But what we don't have yet is a spam filter on our Social Media accounts that automatically keeps those messages away from us.

I received a direct message from one of the regional H.R. managers of a national company that read:

guaranteed. make $3,000 to $8,000 a month from home. http://tiny.cc/43vns

I changed the url to protect all of us, click on it and you'll go to Google.

I didn't click on the one in my direct message because it was clearly spam.

But how did this happen in the 1st place?

Either his account was hacked.

Or he clicked on an application and gave permission to it to send messages to his Twitter Followers.

I'm betting it was option 2.

There is a third option, and that he went rogue and has become a MLM spammer trying to sell his social media credibility to pick up a few bucks with dreams of becoming a millionaire.

Unlikely.

As the say in life, Buyer Beware, applies to clicking on stuff online too.

Every once in awhile each of us should double check our Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media accounts and see what applications we are allowing access to our friends.

Revoke those that are bad and save face and preserve your social media credibility.


ScLoHo is Scott Howard, a Solutions Consultant with Cirrus ABS. You can contact him here:

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