Infosecurity.US

News, this fine morning, of a growing, and relatively hidden (to the hoi-polloi)  Twitter issue: Trending Scams and Spam…  Further information, and appropriate linkage appears after the jump.

From the original Mashable post by Stand Schroeder: “Scamming Twitter Trends: This Needs To Be Fixed”

Right now, it’s relatively easy to create a Twitter trending topic (see them at search.twitter.com). Example: start a game, get a couple of friends to join in, and if it catches on, you’ve got yourself a trend. Unfortunately, this also means that it’s easy to manipulate the trending topics for purposes of spam or even worse.
Currently, there’s a trending topic called #TwitterPornNames. It’s supposed to be a game to pass the time, but according to PC World, it’s

“nothing more then a disguise to get users to publicly post answers to their online security questions. The current game has a few variations you take the name of your first pet combine it with the street you grew up on or your mothers maiden name. All of these are common security questions to access your online accounts and bank information.”

Sounds like a miserable attempt at a scam, but the topic is popular, so maybe someone is buying into it. Don’t.