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Fox News, CNN Rick Sanchez and Brit Brit Apparently Fall For Twitter Phishing Scam
We reported this past weekend about the Twitter phishing scam that was hitting the circuit hard. This morning we received reports via Tamar Weinberg and Ron Hekier on Twitter of what appears to be a hacked Fox News account.
As you can see from the graphic below, the current tweet message from Fox News reads, "Breaking: Bill O Riley is gay". Was the Fox News account the latest victim of the Twitter phishing scam? Or perhaps it was the work of a disgruntled employee?
The issue here is that while eventually the account in question will be fixed, during the phished period, Fox News looks bad. Perhaps Twitter needs a phone hotline for those affected by the phishing scam?
UPDATE: Looks like more accounts have been hacked: Britney Spears and Rick Sanchez got hit – see photos below.
UPDATE: It appears Twitter staff have removed the offending messages.
Along the same lines as this story, twitter got accounts phished a few days ago. I guess no site is unbreakable.
And @BarackObama’s been hacked too – http://twitter.com/barackobama
Someone is moving fast to fix them. The Obama one has gone, the Brit one has also been cleaned but the Rick one is still posting! And what’s wrong with a medical term in ‘Brit’s’ tweet. I respect your decision not to post it, just seems a bit weird as it’s not an obscene word?
Yep – poor Twitter – this really has to suck – how can they work on a biz model when this type of crap keeps coming up.
as for removing the word – we have a lot of readers at work and I wouldn’t want a person to be reading, the boss walks over and says "hey what’s that?!?!"
but i do appreciate your feedback!
I can’t say poor Twitter, this is to be expected, and should be expected by almost all major sites on some level. If anything we should say poor Twitter users, those of us that follow some of the people that get duped by these phishers get stuck un-following those users or receiving a ton of spam.