Every day it seems I get direct messages from people on Twitter that say incredibly shocking things like,
“OMG I can’t believe they filmed you doing this!”
“Someone is spreading nasty rumours about you”
“This person is making up dreadful posts that are about you”
“What exactly are you doing in this movie?”
Contrary to popular belief, my life is not that exciting as these DMs might suggest. I'm actually quite well-behaved.
The wording changes from time to time, but you get the idea. It’s a shock message, and supposedly, it’s about YOU. The messages always include some sort of a link. Because you know, it’s the link to show you the nasty rumour / compromising video etc. that’s all about you, right?
Wrong. Please don’t click on the links in the messages. Ever.
There’s nothing new about these spammy DMs - they’ve been around for ages but the thing is, they continue to grow and grow like the nasty virus that they are because people keep clicking on the links.
If you click on the link, you get redirected over to a site that tricks you into thinking you’ve been logged out of Twitter, or that your session has expired, so therefore you must log in again. Which you do.
SURPRISE! It’s a fake site and you just gave them your Twitter name and password.
(smacks hand to forehead)
Then the virus will continue on the chain of shock DMs, only they’ll be sending them from your account. Shortly after that, you’ll be getting some emails from friends that truly DO care about what you’ve done to let you know they’re getting spam from your Twitter account.
That’s the type of Twitter DM you need to pay attention to.
If you find that this has happened to you, reset your Twitter password right away and check what applications have access to your Twitter account. I can’t stress enough how important it is to routinely do this simple thing.
Then it’s totally up to you to send out a tweet that says something like, “I swear to gawd, I was HACKED and did not do or see anything that my DM said I did! #Innocent"
Oh spam, you used to be such a fun word....
Mondays are always such busy days aren’t they? My Monday today was no exception, it’s been crazy busy with lots and lots of things to do. No problem, I was running on a big dose of vitamins and caffeine so I was fuelled for the busy day.
And then mid-Monday I started reading that Facebook was publishing private messages to public timelines.
What the what? Facebook you just farked up my Monday. This was not part of the schedule.
Supposedly some Facebook users in France and the US have seen private messages from 2008 and 2009 show up on viewable timelines. A spokesman from Facebook has said that this is not the case, and aside from one incident that they know of, they are satisfied that there has not been a breach of user privacy.
This is where it gets a bit confusing. Prior to 2008, there was no way to "like" or "comment" on a friend’s wall post, so instead Facebook friends would just post back and forth on each other’s walls. Kind of like how private messages happen now. So the question now with this info is whether the messages being seen are in fact private messages or just wall posts between friends.
I’m tending to lean towards the idea that it's back-and-forth wall posts. I vaguely remember those days of writing on each other’s walls—it seems like an eternity ago now but it is how commenting on FB used to be done.
Regardless of whether this is a security hiccup with Facebook or not, this news today is another good reminder that everyone should periodically check their Facebook security settings and change their passwords. Take a few minutes to go through all of those old private Facebook messages and if they’re no longer of any use to you, delete them.
When was the last time you checked what apps have access to your Facebook profile? You know, those apps that you’ve given permission to post on your behalf—do they really need to? Go through them now and if you don’t use them or remember what they are, revoke access now. You might be surprised to find out how many apps you've given permission to access your information on Facebook.
Facebook has gone through a lot of changes in a very short time & things are organized very differently from how they appeared to you before. Here are the key areas you should check from time to time:
Nowadays anything can be hacked or screwed up and you should never assume that anything you do on the internet is “private.” If you’re writing or posting something that is personal or private, keep in mind that one day it might come out and suddenly be public.
It might be a few days or a few years but the point is, it might happen.
Cover your butt before it does.
The very clever gang at Kitestring Creative posted a video tonight explaining a very quick & easy way to make sure messages are hidden from your timeline. Check it out - it's super easy and a great way to make your posts are kept private - whether they're on your wall or a personal message.
First of all Pinterest, before I start talking about how awesome you are, I need to apologize. You see, YOU were going to be my very first GigaMom post—the debut, the beginning, the new chapter. Yes.
But then a week of technological craziness happened. GoDaddy.com had a huge outage, my annoyance about Facebook contests came to a head, the iPhone5 was announced and to top it all off, Internet Explorer discovered they had a nasty security flaw.
It was beyond my control—I had to be a responsible GigaMom and discuss these topics as they happened and sadly, that meant you were shuffled to the bottom of the blog list.
Forgive me, Pinterest.
Okay, there’s my gushy love letter to Pinterest & I’ll stop writing like it’s an actual person...although you know, it’s quite likely is.
My name is GigaMom and I’m a Pinaholic. I’ve been addicted to Pinterest since...well, that’s really irrelevant right now, isn’t it? The point is that Pinterest is here, it’s huge, it's addictive and it’s not going anywhere. Pinterest isn’t a fad, it’s fun. It’s not hard to figure out, and once you start using it, you too will likely have an addiction. And you may be in need of a #Pintervention like I am.
By the way, I’m pretty sure I came up with the term #Pintervention. Just sayin’...
What Is Pinterest? Pinterest is a virtual memory board. Imagine a huge cork memo board in your room when you were a kid—remember how you would pin things on there that you wanted to always remember? Sometimes, if you were very organized, you would pin things on the corkboard in groups. Here are all the cool concert tickets, over here is some cool artwork, in this corner photos from vacation and up at the top, some of the best slogans you’d ever heard.
That’s what Pinterest is. Only it’s virtual and you do it online. On your computer, from your phone or tablet, anywhere.
Many many moons ago when the internet was very new, there used to be webrings. Webrings were collections of favourite websites that were grouped together—usually by a navigation bar at the top of the page. So you’d find one for say, Halloween, and then that would lead to another website, which led to another one yada yada yada... you get the picture. But the flaw with webrings is that as soon as you went off to another site, you lost all of the other ones you were at. Frustrating to say the least.
Then bookmarking came along, and you could easily categorize websites right in your browser. Worked really well, but ultimately, you ended up looking at a big list of websites and didn’t really have the patience to go through each one looking for that cool pumpkin costume you saw 7 weeks earlier.
Thank gawd Pinterest came along and changed all that. Now you just log into your Pinterest account and then as you are surfing the web, you just “pin” graphics & photos from the sites on to your account.
It’s brilliant. Pumpkin costume found in moments.
Sign up to join Pinterest here. All you need is an email address to get started, and if you want, you can connect your Facebook or Twitter accounts as well. It used to be that Pinterest was invitation only and you HAD to connect a social media account, but that changed in August of this year. So go on, sign up... I’ll just wait here for you while you do.
You’ll see that more and more websites now have share buttons on their pages that include an option to post on Pinterest. All of our pages at YMC have them (That doesn't come as a surprise to you, does it?). Or you can install a Pinterest bookmarklet into your browser. That’s probably one of the easiest methods of pinning.
It just is. Ask anyone what Pinterest is, and chances are, the first thing they'll say is "It's addictive!"
I’m glad you asked...
OF COURSE WE DO!
You can find us over here on Pinterest—as of today we have 47 boards and are closing fast on almost 2,000 pins. Take a look & let me know what you think.
Some of our pins have gone absolutely viral on Pinterest, the biggest one of all is quite likely Maija’s breakfast muffin recipe
Then there’s Ali’s post about belts
And also pretty much anything from Sarah Gunn...
Not only is YMC big on Pinterest, we’re also having a Pinterest Back-to-School Contest!! Take a look at our contest page here & then have some fun at our Back To School Pinterest board. Three lucky winners will win a $50 Indigo gift card - but the contest closes September 28th, 2012 so hurry over there and pin it to win it!
And of course, feel free to pin this post too...did you notice all of the pretty things I put in here for you to pin?
I’ll see you at my #Pintervention.
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