Twitter: Someone using your email address to send Spam?

As one of the few people in the world who has never created a Twitter account, I was disappointed when a certain email was sent to my address.

Welcome to Twitter, emariswgne. Wait a minute? Who is emariswgne?

Naturally I figured it was probably an account phish, but lo and behold, the user name does exist and is using my email address. The account was quickly suspended for sending spam.

Saying goodnight to Cialis obviously raises a huge red flag!

I was wondering how in the world could someone sign my email address up for twitter? Maybe my email account was phished and they were using my password. I was skeptical of this and I tested out a little hypothesis of mine. Let’s create a twitter account using any email address I chose. Congrats a new twitter account was created!

It seems you can use just about anyone’s email address provided they did not sign up for Twitter themselves. Even though  Twitter doesn’t  initially care about which email address you are using, they take the time to blacklist them for sending spam. If I ever wanted to use my email address in the future, I am now forbidden to under their suspension rules. Of course you can email Twitter support but why would they want to waste their time responding to a “spammer“.

How long will they take to respond?
“Emanuele Swafford from Hawaii” isn’t going to wait forever.

It’s pretty easy for Twitter to rectify this problem. All Twitter really needs to do is set up some form of email confirmation. Considering Twitter is a social networking site, I have no idea why they would ever skip such a useful feature many websites use to avoid spammers.

Is Aim Going to Start Charging to Register Janurary 1st? Who is Mark Jenkins?

It appears that today, there has been an IM circulating around to every screen name. The message is as follows:

Dear AIM USERS, Because of our overloading of our servers, we are being forced to extract our non-active AIM users. Because this is a free service, AOL has exceeded the budget for the AIM service. We are asking that you send this exact message to 20 other AIM users to ensure us that you’re an active AIM user. Our system tracking devise will pick up this message to keep you on our active list. You have 72 hours to complete this task or your service will be cancelled immediately. Starting January 1st, 2009, we will be charging a small fee for registering of a screen name for AIM. Thank you for your time and for using AOL or AIM. Sincerely Mark Jenkins.

We regret to inform you that although we sent out a warning telling all aim users we are cutting accounts that we see are not being used regularly people have not been responding.So as warned we shall begin cutting accounts starting Friday July 18. Forward this message to 30 or your account as well shall be cut. Thank you for using AOL Instant Messenger

Dear AIM users, Because of our overloading of our a servers, we are being forced to extract our non-active AIM users. Because this is a free service, AOL has exceeded the budget for the AIM service. We are asking that you send this exact message to 20 other AIM users to ensure us that you’re an active AIM user. Our system tracking devise will pick up this message to keep you on our active list. You have 72 hours to complete this task or your service will be cancelled immediately. Starting December 10, 2008, we will be charging a small fee for the registering of a screen name for AIM. Thank you

Is this message True or False?

False! This is actually “chain” instant message to scare users into thinking they must send this message to everyone they know.

What happens if I send this message to other people?

AOL has been flagging this message as spam. This means that if you do send that message, you will likely get kicked off of aim and your account may be suspended. If your account has been suspended by sending this message, please login through my.screenname.aol.com and select forgot password.

In the future please disregard any IMs that are similar to this. Every few months, chain IMs are sent out giving false warnings about various things. Most of the time they want you to send it to everyone you know.

I don’t believe you, this must be true!

If you believe in every IM you get, you will most likely get your account stolen. There are people out there pretending to be AOL staff that will IM you for your password. Once you give it to them, the account is no longer yours and they can change your password in a moment’s notice. Besides, Mark Jenkins does not work for AOL, he is actually an urban artist.