implications Archives - TheWayoftheWeb

There’s obviously been a lot of in-depth intelligent analysis of the demise of the News of the World due to the phone-hacking outcry. So rather than attempt to add to that, I just wanted to throw three quick thoughts out there:

People still read print newspapers? Recent research has claimed around 50% of the UK population no longer read a daily paper, and that number is only growing – the demographic for the News of the World is likely to be one which embraces smartphones as later adopters, but closing the print product now is only likely to have pre-empted what would have happened in the future, and a digital title may or may not have succeeded, but given the content and the transitional chaos of mainstream news online, it’s not assured that a digital version would have been guaranteed to continue.
‘Hacking’ has probably skewed so far to the negative connotations of the word that any positive associations will fade pretty fast, whether that’s the idea of improving an inefficient program, hacking together software for a positive outcome, or lifehacking etc. I’ve overheard several conversations recently from people way outside the computer literate world, all concerned with hacking, and all referencing phone-hacking and recent Lulzsec and Anonymous activities. That’s what the word ‘hacking’ means to most people now.
Journalism is likely to go the same way – the negatives get massive press coverage and analysis, whilst the good is rarely commented on. For many years bloggers have aspired to be accepted on the same terms as journalists, while some journalists have attempted to maintain an occupational gap even to this day, without clarifiying much except academic qualifications as a barrier. But now, maybe we’ll all have to put that to one side and become writers, when the stories of journalists using phone-hacking, or pestering people via email, social networks and in person are becoming widely spread online. I’m holding two training sessions as part of a journalism training course this month, and I wonder how, in the UK and U.S at least, the term ‘journalist’ is being perceived – I can only suspect it’s in a similar place as ‘banker’ except not paid as well.

Twitter has been hit by the first major effort to ‘phish‘ account details and spam users with links to a fake login page by Direct Messages from comprimised accounts.

The Twitter team has responded with a warning on the main web access page, and a warning on the Twitter blog. You can see the uproar it’s causing on Twitter via Twitter Search.

Currently the DMs are enticing people with:

Here’s a funny blog about you
Your picture is on this blog
You’ve won a free iphone

Luckily the phishers are at least sticking to the grand tradition of email spamming by either trying to entice you with a blatantly ‘too good to be true’ offer, or something personal with the link to a fake Twitter log-in page displayed in full, so hopefully the word has spread to most people.

However, this is likely to be just the start. As Pete Cashmore pointed out at Mashable, this is a sign Twitter has reached a big enough size to be a viable target for scams – a positive sign for Twitter’s growth perhaps, but also a sign that the scammers and spammers are coming, with pretty big implications for Twitter users.

Shortened urls:

For starters, we were all lucky in some ways that the bloggers obviously aren’t familiar with Twitter culture, and were displaying the full url of the fake website, meaning that even if the DM came from someone we absolutely trusted, we had a warning before clicking.

But given that the character limit of Twitter means that shortened urls are the norm, it will make it almost impossible to detect whether a link is likely to be fake before at least visiting it – meaning an urgent need for preview functionality of shortened urls at the bare minimum.

Warning systems:

A lot of Twitter users picked up on the scam emails via friends, and stayed up to date with information via the #phishing hash tag etc – Twitter responded promptly with a warning on the website and blog. But what about the many, many people using a client to access Twitter and their Direct Messages? And those using mobiles to access the service?

Will everyone get a warning via each client and application? Unlikely at the moment, unless there is a type of ’emergency signal’ which could be broadcast across all clients and apps.

Verified App Store:

Which brings me to the next possible implication – a few people have suggested that the fake log in page is in fact working as a Twitter application to utilise the stolen accounts and passwords.

It’s long been a matter of contention for users and app developers that any 3rd party application which requires a certain level of functionality has to ask for usernames and passwords – but now the 3rd party developers could be hit by a huge loss of trust from users.

So could this be an opportunity for a verified and approved Twitter application resource? Possibly monetised by charging a fee for consumers (unlikely), or for developers to have their application tested and approved (more likely)?

This could have implications for the speed and amount of Twitter applications and clients being produced, and also move such development away from bedroom coders depending on the fees for such services.

It certainly means that there could be a move for more users to utilise more than one Twitter account to allow them to test applications and clients etc without comprimising their main account.

So what other implications do you think the arrival of large scale phishing attacks could have on Twitter – and what suggestions do you have for other Tweeple – and Twitter itself, to try to minimise the damage of future attacks?

Implications of the News of the World phone hacking…

Twitter phishing attack – the implications

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