What is the Twitter spam invasion? And how can you prevent it?

Here's a release sent to me recently! Reproduced here for readers.

UK: With the popularity of social networking platforms such as Twitter on the rise, cyber criminals have found an easy target among unsuspecting users. BitDefender offers advice on how Twitter users can avoid falling prey to some of the most common tricks regularly employed by hackers.

One of the biggest spam related security problems facing Twitter are the many link-shortening services utilized for hyperlink posting. Users are limited to 140 characters per tweet; these URL-shortening services allow tweeters to post a longer link under such tight character limitations.

Hackers use these link-shortening services to disguise malicious links. Some infections could be easily prevented by allowing users to see the real URL before clicking on it.

BitDefender’s senior antispam researcher Catalin Cosoi says, “Another big problem is the fact that search engines, such as Google, index Twitter profiles. This allows malicious pages that are built and marketed with good social engineering tactics to end up high in the rankings. Additionally, because Twitter messages are so short lived, users could unknowingly send spam messages without having the opportunity to notice that someone else is using their account.”

Some of the common types of Twitter spam include:
1. Tweet spam: Tweet spam comes from someone a user is currently following and everyone following that user will see the tweet.

2. Direct Message: A direct message comes from someone a user is currently following and only the user will see the message.

3. ReTweet Spam: ReTweet spam searches for legitimate tweets and reposts them in the system but with a different, malicious URL.

4. Trending Subjects Spam: Trending subjects spam searches for hot topics on Twitter (like Michael Jackson’s death) and posts similar tweets with different, malicious URLs.

5. Following Spam: Following spam happens when a user’s profile receives a lot of followers he/she doesn’t know. If the user does not start following them back within a week, they stop following the user.

Statistics show that one in two users will follow back. Usually, these profiles are bots which are programmed to acquire as many followers as possible before they can start broadcasting spam.

Fortunately, Twitter users can protect themselves from falling into spam traps by following five tips:

1. Install a comprehensive security solution on your computer - preferably a suite containing antivirus, firewall and a phishing filter.

2. Follow the spam profile on Twitter: http://twitter.com/spam. Users can find good advice here. For example, a recent post states: "If you gave your login and password info to TwitViewer, we strongly suggest you change your password now. Thanks!"

3. Don’t click on all the links you receive.

4. Disable the "auto followback" option. This will allow you to pick and chose who you want to follow.

5. Make sure you know who you are following.

Cosoi adds: “By following these simple tips, users of social networking sites like Twitter can protect themselves from spammers and other cyber criminals.”

Blogger turns 10! Many happy returns of the day!!

Last week, Google's well known Blogger platform turned 10! Many happy returns of the day!

How did I learn of this? From a follower on Twitter, named TechPupil. Apologies, I can't paste that particular story link here, lest that link turn into a malware host or some bad link later on! :) So, please search for this site, and the post on Blogger turning 10!

I may have been having some tough times in the recent weeks with Blogger -- first with it marking my blog -- Pradeep Chakraborty's Blog -- as having malware, and later, removing the site, and later, it also blocked five of my other blogs -- on electronic components, electronics, semiconductors, solar/PV and telecom -- as spam blogs, only to release it later, on request.

My troubles apart, I am the first to admit to being a massive fan of blogger, and find it a great, very user friendly platform with super features. Hey, those are the very reasons that I've so many blogs on Blogger in the first place!

Would definitely hate to leave Blogger, some day! I personally share an emotional history with it -- as this very blogging platform also won me a best blogger's world title in early December 2008, and another, in February 2009 -- for Pradeep Chakraborty's Blog.

Am quite sure that Blogger has made a mistake somewhere regarding my blog and sincerely hope that sooner or later, it will be returned to me. If, for some reason, it remains unreturned, let that famous and well known blog rest in peace!

And well, as I've told a couple of friends, if I can write that particular blog, I can very well write other such blogs quite easily, especially on semiconductors and telecom! Besides, my identity starts and ends with me, and not with that particular blog, or any other, for that matter.

Till this last week, I've never had any problems with the Blogger platform and in fact, have recommended it to several of my friends and colleagues. Keeping with its trend, it is quite certain that Blogger will be introducing great features in the future for bloggers such as you and me!

Keep up the good work, Blogger (and Google)!

Google blocked my blog! So, I moved to another URL!!

Wonder why Google has done so! A few days ago, I kept receiving messages that there was some malware within my blog -- Pradeep Chakraborty's Blog -- with the url http://pradeepchakraborty.blogspot.com

The next thing I know late evening is -- this blog is first blocked and then it disappears!

Since then, I've received lots of messages from friends and people from far away, who've been searching for my blog and blog posts. Thanks a lot for your support, guys!

I've sent requests to Google to return my blog, but till now, no reply has come from them!

Nevertheless, within one hour of this event, I changed to a new blog address, which is: http://pradeepchakraborty.wordpress.com! Yes, I've finally moved this blog out of Blogger, even though I didn't want to! I've been literally forced to do so!

I'd added a new site -- http://pradeep-chakraborty.blogspot.com, only for that too to be blocked for malware. I've no idea what's happened, and now, I have stopped bothering.

I have added a site with the same blog posts -- http://testlinksonblog.blogspot.com -- but I don't know how long it will be before this gets blocked for malware.

I wonder why Google said I had malware on my blog, when I only blog about technology related subjects, and especially, semiconductors and telecom. There's no post on sleaze or pornography or sex! Even then?

I didn't know that semicon and telecom were just some other bad words! Apologies!!

Well, most importantly, why on earth will I promote spam or malware? And, how am I to supposed to know what links will later go on to become malware or spam? And even if some links did become like those, isn't it Google's job to protect bloggers like us? They are the online experts, and not I!

How can blogging ever be safe, when the leading global company promoting a blogging platform can't protect itself, leave alone bloggers!

I've tried to do work as honestly as possible. Even then, if I am penalized for no fault of mine, there's nothing much I can do!

About a month ago, Google found my Electronics blog a spam blog! Why will I spam anyone, when I don't even have a newsletter? Nor have I told anyone to spam my posts. It is up to readers to visit that particular blog and read what they wish!

Today, I receive another mail from Google, saying my Solar PV blog is a spam blog!

Come on guys! This is just too much!!

Coming back to my main blog, I have a dedicated follower of readers -- who visit Pradeep Chakraborty's Blog to read that content. If I were, some day, to stop blogging -- because of Google's actions -- please don't blame me!

Or, perhaps, I should move over to Wordpress, or some other blogging platform, where I don't have to break my head over being a spam blog or an attack site, etc. etc.! Nor do I wish to make scores of backups for my blogs! Or, to change URLs. Where's the need? There's much more to life beyond all of this!

Really, this is extremely irritating and frustrating! So much for blogging!!

Maybe, next time this happens, I'll have to bid goodbye to Blogger.

Am also very sure that the semiconductor and telecom worlds can find much better bloggers...

P.S.: Well, after locking three other blogs -- solar, telecom and later, semiconductors, Google unlocked those. Thanks a lot, Google.

Update: August 24 -- Now, Google has blocked my Electronic Components blog! This, after removing my main blog, and then blocking (and later releasing) Solar, Telecom and Semiconductor blogs... and earlier, Electronics! Just don't know what to make of all these...

Thanks to Maxitweet, 140 characters no longer Twitter limit!

A new service, called Maxitweet, seems to have found a way to extend the limit of your tweets to beyond 140 characters. Read on...

CHRISTCHURCH, NEW ZEALAND: Type "140 characters" into Twitter's search box and the resulting tweets come flooding in -- predictably the majority of them lamenting this constraint. A new Twitter service, has found a way around the restriction by clever use of letter-like symbols called Unicode characters.

"Maxitweets" are up to 200 characters long, an increase of nearly 50 percent, and have opened up new possibilities for the fast growing Twitter communications platform.

For example, tweeted recipes ("twecipes") are easier to read with the extra space available. A number of poets have also responded enthusiastically. A limerick aficionado, who had given up on trying to tweet the humorous five-liners because they tend to be around 180 characters long, now posts them several times a day as @limerik. And breaking news services -- among the more prominent users of Twitter -- are able to tweet the news item, rather than just a link to it.

How does it work?
Twitter caters for users in many countries and therefore transmits in a universal font language called "Unicode." It contains over 100,000 glyphs in hundreds of languages. Maxitweet was the first to realize that glyphs resembling two or more normal letters can help to transmit text more efficiently.

In the word "lions," for example, two characters are saved by replacing the vowels with a Cyrillic letter resembling "io," followed by the Unicode symbol for nanosecond "ns."

"We spent weeks combing through thousands of glyphs in many languages -- Cyrillic, Thai, Arabic, Hiragana," says Wytze Hoekstra, project manager at FrisianStyle Productions, which runs Maxitweet.com. "We then wrote a javascript engine that compresses text in the background and delivers a user-friendly experience."

Will the new limit improve the Twitter experience? Even though 140 was enough to produce many memorable tweets, like those collected by http://www.besttweets.com -- "Museum for the Art of Micro-Elegance" -- it remains to be seen whether the expanded limit will take Twitter to new heights. Some say 140 characters is too many. "I'd only call about 30 of them 'characters.' The other 110 are quite boring." -- Aimee Brock (@Aimee_B_Loved on Twitter).

Perhaps, the argument is best summed up by Jason Shellen (@shellen): "When people ask me about the brevity of Twitter I always tell them 'You can really say a lot in just 140 characters. More than you would th '."

Is Twitter hyped? Research indicates otherwise!

UK: Underneath all the hype about Twitter, evidence is emerging that it can bring genuine value when used in the business environment, particularly for the younger generation.

Business-to-business industry researcher AIIM found that 27 percent of 18-30 year-olds agree that Twitter is an important rapid-feedback tool for business use, compared to only 7 percent of those over 45.

Users feel it gives them unprecedented access to answers from experts, and they find it useful for running mini polls, sharing opinions during conferences and events, and making contacts whilst travelling. In total, 34 percent of the survey population has a Twitter account.

The survey also found that business users of Twitter are much more engaged than personal users, with half of the business users actively contributing and posting, rather than merely following.

As regards following, 55 percent of users feel it has given them a useful insight into other professional's lives and businesses. However, even among committed users, there is a concern that Twitter might steal too much of their time, with 74 percent using it during working hours.

“We’ve been tracking the rapid growth of Enterprise 2.0 -- the business use of social media - for a couple of years,” comments Atle Skjekkeland, VP of AIIM, “but Twitter has grown much faster than anything we’ve seen before. It seems to me that Twitter brings back such quick answers from any expert community that it cannot fail to have a lasting place within the general business toolbox.”

The AIIM survey, which polled 788 respondents, indicates that LinkedIn is twice as popular as Facebook for business networking, with over 50 percent of participants having an account.

Two thirds feel that professional networking on the web is vital to their career progression –- even more so in the current difficult times. Pressure is growing on IT departments to replicate social networking tools within the work environment, with a third expecting to use the same type of networking tools with their business colleagues as they do with friends and family, and 71 percent finding it easier to locate knowledge on the web than it is to find it on internal systems.

The AIIM research report is entitled “Collaboration and Enterprise 2.0: work meets play or the future of business?” Part of the AIIM Industry Watch series, the report is free to download from the AIIM website,
www.aiim.org.uk. It is underwritten by Allyis, Ektron, EMC Corporation and
Oracle.

Microsoft and Yahoo -– together at last! Oh well... should Google be scared?

Given below is a comment from Ovum on the Yahoo-Microsoft deal.

While a lot of noise has been made about Microsoft's Bing, I personally don't feel that it is such a great search engine. I've tried searching for various things several times, and haven't been really impressed. All those add-ons, etc. are of little help, if I as a user am not satisfied with the results. Am sure that this is a rule of thumb that applies equally to every other user.

So, I don't really know how Yahoo stands to gain from this deal, or whether Google should be scared!

What's interesting is that, earlier, it was Microsoft that everyone wanted to beat! Then Google happened, and well, left Yahoo behind in the search engine space. And, then, it has taken on Microsoft as well in certain areas!

Now, the wheel has turned a full circle -- the two erstwhile competitors -- Yahoo and Microsoft -- have joined hands to take on the might of Google. Remains to be seen whether two are better than one (Ek se bhaley do!) ;)

What I also don't quite really enjoy is the idea of having Yahoo! Mail, which I've been using since 1997, to be part of Hotmail or something else. Perhaps, time for me to give up those Yahoo! IDs forever! Oh well...

Nevertheless, it is up to the end users -- like you and me -- who search for stuff on the Internet to decide who would go on to lead! Enjoy this Ovum comment!!

Comment from Mike Davis, senior analyst at Ovum

It was a long time coming
UK: Microsoft’s original bid for Yahoo back in January 2008 made the most popular Internet destination in the world worth $47.5 billion. The offer was rejected by then CEO Jerry Yang, resulting in Microsoft walking away from the table.

Yang then attempted to tie up Yahoo with Google and use that company’s search technology. However, that deal fell at the regulatory hurdle. Yang’s subsequent departure and the drop in quarterly earnings resulted in the layoff of 5 percent of Yahoo’s workforce in April 2009 and showed that new CEO Carol Bartz had to do something.

When Microsoft’s new search engine Bing was released in June, with technologies gained from the FAST and Powerset acquisitions, outgunning Yahoo seach capabilities, Bartz knew that that something had to be dramatic.

Microsoft should be happy; Google should be a bit worried
Under the terms of the agreement (and still subject to regulatory approval on both sides of the Atlantic), Yahoo gets to use Microsoft’s Bing search engine rather than its own, and Microsoft gets to pay Yahoo 88 percent of search revenues arising from Yahoo sites for five years -– but of course Microsoft also gets to keep $47.5 billion in the bank.

Microsoft gains exclusive licence to Yahoo’s search technologies, which Microsoft will be free to integrate into its own. It also gains access to all of Yahoo’s long-standing and loyal customers –- this author has trusted and relied upon Yahoo! Mail for over ten years –- and Yahoo’s self-serve advertising will migrate to Microsoft AdCenter. Basically, both companies are playing to their core competencies: Microsoft to the technology and Yahoo to its domain knowledge in advertising and media.

As Ovum has previously stated, Bing is not a ‘Google killer’. However, with the addition of Yahoo’s customer base and its targeting of higher-yield advertising, the new so-called ‘decision engine’ should start to give Google a serious run for its money, and provide better competition on price for prospective advertisers.

Furthermore, as Ovum has previously described, the now bitter rivalry between Google and Microsoft should ensure that improvements to the functionality and usability of the respective search engines will continue apace.

Nothing will happen tomorrow -– certainly not in Asia
Even if it gains regulatory approval, Yahoo’s use of Bing will not start until 2010 –- and then on a geographical basis, with the priority being the US and then Europe.

This will give Baidu, the strong Chinese Internet search provider, and Naver, the most popular player in South Korea, plenty of opportunities to reinforce and expand their positions in that geography. Given the potential size of that market, this could be a missed opportunity.

Yahoo and its shareholders appear to be the losers
While the deal is cited as boosting Yahoo’s operating income by $500 million and reducing costs by $200 million, the company’s shares are currently trading at only half the value offered by Microsoft in January 2008, and fell a further 10 percent after this announcement.

This does give Yahoo’s CEO Carol Bartz a period of time and some money to develop the organisation into its vision of being the world’s “largest online media company”.

However, 10 years is a very long time in the true market that is the Internet, and the use of Bing will not start until early 2010. Microsoft, or others, might still take the opportunity to buy the former Internet search leader at a marked-down price in the near future if Bartz cannot deliver that vision.

Is the PR industry challenged by social media?

I came across a very interesting discussion on LinkedIn, titled: A Tale Of PR And Social Media. Apparently, the message is: for many PR agencies, working or even grasping social media is a nightmare.

So, is the PR industry really challenged by social media? Perhaps, yes!

Can it overcome this challenge? Of course!

Business social media, or even social media, surely helps speaking in the language your target audience appreciates and understands.

However, it seems that PR folks haven't really come to terms with all of this. The PR industry should realize that bombarding press releases to bloggers don't help at all and neither do requests to write about specific companies and their initiatives.

In fact, I haven't even seen PR take help of bloggers and other social media platforms immensely.

What I did find some PR folks doing was to try and send media invitations over some social media networks, or even open some specific page for a particular company and then send requests to join that page or group!

Maybe, these will work in the short run, but definitely not in the long run. Friends in the PR, that's definitely not going to help you meet your needs!

On a personal note, I sometimes get tired of PR folks asking me for leads so they can make new clients. I have helped a few in the past, but that's when I used to be part of the media.

Well, would such PR folks pay me -- if I did provide solid leads? No, they would not! And well, would PR agencies share their client details with me? No, unless, I have a particular story to write, which would feature that company, and well, am part of a big publishing house.

A lot of PR folks and even companies get in touch with me daily with some request or the other. However, the moment I speak about some payment, I receive mixed responses. Perhaps, they all are not ready yet to pay bloggers since we are all used to content being available free. However, this free thing won't stay for long... :)

This is also a reason why bloggers like to avoid PR firms and probably, even some companies, for that matter! Why publicize someone when that person getting publicity won't even pay you? Fair enough!

If you also notice, some of the best content is available on blogs. That's the reason why companies are now having bloggers on their payrolls, or have independent blogs! Not only is it cheaper to host content, you are also assured of real quality content from top-notch bloggers.

I'd like to highlight a case here, and this one is not from me, but from a well known blogger covering DAC 2009.

ATRENTA BLOGFEST
Why are we doing this?
We want to reach out to the press/bloggers at DAC, but not with a traditional press conference. Rather than discuss new product announcements, etc., we’d rather discuss design trends and have a lively debate about what they mean!

A panelist discusses a point of view on the topic for three minutes (and no more). No slides, but strong opinions are solicited. We then open the floor to the bloggers for a spirited discussion.

Wow! I am really elated to even read this! Wonder when we can have such events or blogfests here in India!

Well, how many PR firms, or even companies, would be bold enough and like to do such a thing? Both of them should try to find a win-win situation where they can make full use of social media and bloggers, and also help bloggers make some money too!

I feel that a huge opportunity is out there for companies, PR, bloggers, etc.

So many well known bloggers have their own tweets...those can be made use of so successfully! Why, even placing a Twitter or Facebook link on a print magazine or newspaper would help immensely! :)

Google finds my electronics blog a spam blog!

What an interesting thing to happen!

As usual, I was adding press releases to this particular blog, which only focuses on electronics. The moment I published a post and returned to the dashboard, I get this message -- This blog has been locked due to possible Blogger Terms of Service violations. You may not publish new posts until your blog is reviewed and unlocked. This blog will be deleted within 20 days unless you request a review.

Well, immediately, I sent off a blog unlock review request. On clicking that page, I found this message -- Blogger's spam-prevention robots have detected that your blog has characteristics of a spam blog. (What's a spam blog?) Since you're an actual person reading this, your blog is probably not a spam blog. Automated spam detection is inherently fuzzy, and we sincerely apologize for this false positive.

Brilliant! When and whom did I spam? I don't send out newsletters. And these releases are for my personal consumption, so that I may keep up with what's happening in the electronics industry.

So, how is it a spam blog? Can someone help?

I recently wrote a blog post about a bloggers' survey, where I had indicated that perhaps, it is time that I should close down all of my other blogs -- which I recently started to host all of those press releases that I get bombarded with.

Seriously, after this 'spam blog' thing, I am greatly tempted to do so! Maybe, I should also look at other blogging platforms in future.

P.S.: I must thank Google for taking very quick action and taking my electronics blog off my spam blog within hours of my request. Thanks again!