Journal 10, June 21

http://tech.yahoo.com/news/pcworld/20090618/tc_pcworld/spammerscashinginontwitterirannewiphone

Email spammers are possibly the most wide spread of any, but there are plenty of other forms being generated. Those generating spam in various forms are hot on the trail of today's topics. A trend has been recently noticed; spammers are blowing up the "tweeting" space on the ever popular site Twitter. In recent days these tweets have focused on two very hot topics; Iran and the new iPhone 3.o OS. Fake Twitter accounts have been created to draw attention of people by stating things such as, "iPhone OS 3.0 Just Launched. Here are 20 Things To Do With It". When the accompanying links are clicked, the viewer is directed to sites that promote male enhancement. Not only are fake accounts being created, legitimate accounts are also being hacked into and generating such spam. Not only has the iPhone topic been a hot one, but also the recent election that took place in Iran. Spammers have recently used both of these topics to target the interest of Twitter users worldwide. Because of the recent increase in spam on famous social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, certain internet entrepreneur's have banned such sites from employees. Marc Cuban, owner of Dallas Mavericks and chairman of HDNet, recently asked his employees to refrain from using Facebook due to the ever spreading viruses. I think this is a very smart move on his part. There is really no current way to fight this trend than to do such things as refrain from using these sights all together. I think that Mr. Cuban is getting a head start on something that others will face in the near future. Not to be outdone, old-fashioned email spammers have recently been sending emails with fake invitations to join Twitter. These fake attachments are recently been known to be worms to infect the computer. All in all, no matter what form spam will occur in, it will continue to affect our society in a negative way. Will there ever been a true fix to this problem? Or will the only way to completely avoid them be to refrain from using today's technological advances? These question will continue to be asked in the near future.

http://www.itworld.com/security/69488/twitter-plays-key-role-dos-attacks-iran