Curiousity Killed the Cat

Last night I got an interesting tweet/email/text from a Vistage friend (S.B.) "just what are you doing on this movie".  A perfect one liner to capture curiousity.  Now normally I ignore these strange unexplained emails but this on had a url listing as apps.facebook.com that could possibly be a video where my name was "tagged".

While I have nothing to hide -  I was still curious (it could be that latent desire to be a famous movie star in me).  So I decided to take the bait and click on the url.  Naturally it took me to a screen that asked for my twitter name and password.  I couldn't resist (afterall I don't use twitter that much and have no real followers - at least that I could remember). 

The next level displayed a screen (presumably a You Tube screen) with a box asking me to upgrade to improve performance of the movie but upgrading my Flash player.  At that point I knew I had been hacked! Luckily I didn't attempt the upgrade which would have loaded a virus on my machine.

And sure enough, I started getting emails from any twitter followers saying they had received a strange email/text with the same question (or even a variation  - "what could you be doing on this video".

So I quickly changed my twitter password and tweeted to any of my followers to ignore any strange tweets.

It is amazing how quickly a viral message like this proliferates.  Within hours I have now received another tweet from one of my followers that is identical (so curiousity both killed the cat and all the other cat's friends). Then one from Jenna - another cat slain.

Like cats though - twitter has nine lives (that is if you change your password).