Public warned over fake Twitter site

A typosquatting site is masquerading as micro-blogging service Twitter to fool users into taking part in a survey scam, a computer security firm warned Wednesday. "Typosquatting" is another term for URL hijacking, which takes advantage of common typographical errors to redirect unwitting users to a fake website that closely resembles the legitimate site. In this case, Sophos said that the twtter.com site has a motif similar to that of the legitimate twitter.com site, including the well-known silhouette of the Twitter bird. “Of course, if you weren’t watching closely you might think that this is a genuine Twitter questionnaire, and if you really think you might be in the running for a free iPhone 4 or an exotic holiday you may be all too keen to participate," Sophos senior technology consultant Graham Cluley said in a blog post. He said the webpage informs a prospective victim he or she had been especially selected to answer an anonymous questionnaire, and asks “fairly harmless questions" such as “are you male or female?" and “how often do you tweet?" But the survey will then ask for the user’s mobile phone number, which will be charged £1.50 for each multiple-choice question it will be sent. “Once the service has your mobile phone number it will begin to SMS you multiple choice questions. It will cost you £1.50 to receive each question, and a further £1.50 to answer. If you answer the most questions correctly (up to a maximum of 50 - which will have cost you a rather hefty £150) then you’ll be invited to take a tie-breaker," Cluley said. “Whoever is behind this campaign is hoping that enough people will (like me) mistype Twitter’s URL and bring them lots of traffic," he added. — TJD, GMA News