Twitter Security Loophole Exposes Your Direct Messages
Direct messages sent through Twitter can be easily exposed, thanks to a loophole in Twitter’s API, according to Gary-Adam Shannon at Search Engine Watch Reports. When a user logs into another site using their Twitter user name and password, the site can gain access to the private messages, says Shannon. He goes into technical detail, but essentially it’s just a small hack.Shannon recommends you don’t ever log in to a site (other than Twitter.com, obviously) using your Twitter user name and password. Another writer at Search Engine Watch recommends that users erase their Direct Messages after viewing them. There has been no comment from Twitter, but we hope they are looking into the issue now that the problem has been made public.
John Sileo is the award-winning author of Stolen Lives, Privacy Means Profit and the Facebook Safety Survival Guide. His professional speaking clients include the Department of Defense, the FTC, FDIC, Pfizer, Prudential and hundreds of other organizations that care about their information privacy. Contact him directly on 800.258.8076.
Privacy, Social Media, Technology and the Law
Can the Law keep up with technology?
CNN has a new article that addresses this growing issue. Cases are continuing to pop up based on an offense or crime committed in cyberspace. Five years ago suing someone for allegedly slamming you on Twitter would have been unimaginable. But just recently an apartment tenant is being sued for $50,000 in damages after she took to her twitter to complain about her living situation to another user.
Many legal experts are watching these cases carefully because they will lay the groundwork for these unaddressed areas of the law. They said that in this growing age of technology it takes almost 5 years to play catch up with current American law. Lawmakers are unable to predict the next big wave in technology and the legal issues that will follow. With such a severe gray area when it comes to Social Media and your Privacy, society must be able to balance accountability with free speech.
Click Here to read more on this CNN article.
John Sileo provides identity theft training to human resource departments and organizations around the country. His clients include the Department of Defense, Pfizer and the FDIC. To learn more about having him speak at your next meeting or conference, contact him by email or on 800.258.8076.
Tweet Breach: 140 Characters of Destruction
Like a wounded, cornered Doberman, I was irrational and reactive.
My blog was down, non-existent. When you earn your keep by communicating ideas, like I do as a professional speaker, any threat to the distribution of those ideas raises the peach fuzz on the back of your neck. After days of being unable to reach my webmaster by office phone, cell phone, SMS text, instant message or email, I dialed up the pressure on him to respond. I turned to the powerful and influential world of social media…
I tweeted him. Publicly.
@johnswebguy Where in the name of Google Earth are you? Why won’t you contact me? [poetic license applied to save face]
140 characters that delivered the impact of a rabid canine. Yes, there was obvious anger in my words, but they were transformed into a venomous rant in the hands of others. Those reading it from the outside could feel the rage I felt at having been cornered without a backup plan. Unfortunately, in my anger, I didn’t make it a direct tweet (a private communication that only the recipient could see), so anyone following these hyper-succinct mini-blogs could view my dirty laundry and fill in the blanks with any back-story they liked. And fill in they did.
Sileo In the Media
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