Twitter is the biggest internet craze since Facebook, there are currently an estimated 6 million people using it.
A few days ago Twitter users were asked to take part in a “game” called #twitterpornnames. How does it work? You’re supposed to announce a made-up name along with the hash tag and share it. The formula provided to create your name just happens to match some very common security questions to help people reset their passwords. Pet’s name. First teacher. Street you grew up on.
So when people started participating they were in fact sharing the same information used by web sites to reset passwords. It’s called social engineering. It tricked people into revealing sensitive information. And the nature of Twitter is that people share information and click on links without much thought (is this a Gen-Y thing?)
If you use Twitter and see these sort of “games” going around, don’t share private sensitive data so easily. This same data can be used to hack into your accounts.