I didn’t think much about clicking on tiny urls in tweets. Hey, they are pretty convenient, right? But these tiny urls can also be used to hide the site it is sending you to.
Recently, I started to follow back a new follower on my twitter account . They were pretty new to twitter so I thought I would give them a shot. Shortly after, this twitterer (tweeter? twit?) sent me the following direct message:
Hello, engaging foto you have there. So tell me, why r u following @nprpolitics? ;)
‘Okay’ I thought..’ This isn’t really something that would merit a private message, but hey, this person is new to twitter’, so I responded – all in less than 140 characters:
Tks! I follow NPR bc they don’t over tweet like FOX, CNN, MSNBC etc. But I still get some pol. news that I wouldn’t normally come across.
That whole 140 character thing is both a blessing and a crutch. It forces you to be concise in your communication, but also removes opportunity for better explanations, as my tweet above wasn’t the exact reason, but the shortest one of many I could think of (hey if “I” sent a direct message to someone asking why they are following a site, it probably means I’m really interested in knowing why.)
The next day I received the following 3 direct messages:
LOL @The_Curiosity! Well I put them to my list of friends to stalk after seeing how they r the most popular here :)
Yikes the emailing here sucks?!?! I should add you 2 my other friends group, I will give you a link to my account6:17 PM Aug 27th
Add me:: http://sn.im/zyzwn6:17 PM Aug 27th
Suspicion came over me immediately with the first message containing the “LOL” regarding what I said (which wasn’t funny in any way) and how they were following the same account (which they weren’t) because said account was ‘most popular’ (which it… Well it is fairly popular, so one point for them!)
The next expressed similar displeasure I felt about tweets when I originally responded and the final offered me a link to a ‘friends group’ in order to be able to discuss something more in-depth.
Also, around the same time, this same twitterer unfollowed me. Umph.
This whole thing extremely fishy; it was obvious that the tiny url was to send me to some evil site, but I couldn’t resist. I had to see what they were selling. I was lucky it wasn’t a malicous site, just a link to a scam dating site ”Candy Twist”. Trying to leave the login page of candy twist was such a chore due to numerous ambiguous pop-ups to try to trick you into clicking the wrong thing . I didn’t play their game and just temporarily shut off my wifi to close it, and pop-ups no more.
Searching the intertubes to see how scammy this site was, I came across a post of someone that got reeled by a similar fashion as I – except the difference is, this person actually joined up:
Dave May 02 2010 16:50 PM
Absolutely a scam. I was sent a direct message from a follower on twitter to join there after we had a few dts. At the same time they removed (to that effect) their twitter account. I set up a profile and browsed the profiles and started noticing that although I was searching in the London area, a lot of the profiles appeared to allude to American terms and places. One girl from London apparently goes to the beach every day!
The person that sent me the direct messages to this site could very well have been a victim wasting their money. Perhaps they didn’t have a good grasp of the internet nor of the English language… But more likely, this person (or bot) is just one of many trolling twitter for people to take advantage of.
While this tiny url only brought me to a scam dating site, it made me realize that I perhaps should put a little thought into what I click. What if it was a malicious site? I am well aware of phishing sites and sites that can ‘harm your computer‘, and how people HAVE been affected (or hacked) by clicking the wrong tiny url, but I still didn’t take any concern.
I was suffering from Nottomeitus.
So what can you do? Tiny urls are everywhere!
Other than not clicking on any links not from sources you don’t 100% trust? Use a twitter program, like tweetdeck and leave the setting on for “show preview information for short urls”. Pretty simple. I had that option turned off as I found it annoying having to confirm I wanted to visit the site. Now it is back on and my nottomeitus is getting better every day.
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