My new position at the Journal-World means I got home at 6:15 a.m. and slept to about 4. Just like college.
But that meant I missed out of a lot Twitter chatter, which I've apparently become addicted to. A popular topic on the Twitter boards today was a thing called Twitterank, which purportedly rates your popularity on the micro-blogging site.
Turns out, it might be a phishing scam, stealing your password and distributing content under your username.
I was typing in my Twitter ID to see what this thing is when I read a note saying it's a scam. (PS: Nobody's totally sure yet, but there have been reports of phishing after folks logged on to the site, which asks for your ID and password)
Why would anyone be that eager to share their password with an unknown third-party site? Is it vanity? Or just a familiarity with a community that is by and large congenial, helpful and eager to share information?
I would never give out my SSN or bank account number to a strange third party, but I find myself doling out my Twitter password to a variety of sites to a) see what they are and b) further navigate the social web.
While these tools are utterly cool (if not unpractical for most daily uses), it begs a bigger question about how we use the social web. It's a pretty well-established fact that many parents are wary of their kids using MySpace and Facebook, lest predators view their information and photos. So why are we adults, who should know better, so keen to give out private information?
Stranger danger, right?
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