When it happened I thought how strange, this person never DMs me but the line looked so enticing. I first saw the DM in an iPod Twitter client that only showed the official Twitter 't.co' short URL. This made it look more authentic. The short URL shown above would have looked a little more questionable. I very nearly tapped the link but thankfully did not.
What makes it so easy to fall for is: it happens so fast; it happens in the privacy of your own phone; it comes from someone whose avatar presence you are very familiar with and trust.
I had the Twitter client open and was just about to close it when the DM came in. I was not fully alert to what I was doing and I had my mind on other things. I tapped to see the Direct Message Tweet; thought wha..? and nearly tapped the link. If I communicated more with this person, I most likely would have tapped it.
There were a few reasons that made me question the validity of the message. The person does not know me enough to see something about me (but maybe they had found something). I had never seen this person use the acronym of 'LOL' nor was 'laugh so hard' their style of phrase. This person had never DMed me before.
I mentioned to the person that I thought they had been hacked. Shortly after, they started apologising for having spread the problem. Others were caught and they too had to start doing the changing passwords, revoking connected apps, clearing caches, apologising dance of the keyboard. An upsetting, time wasting, sullied with the dark side of technology dance it is too.
One observation from after the event: usually I get an email when I have a Direct Message. I didn't for this one or so it appeared. Later I notice that I did have an email message but Google Gmail had put it in the Spam folder. So another check to remember when receiving an unusual Mention or Direct Message with a link on Twitter (and providing notifications are turned on in Twitter's settings) is check the Spam folder.
