Hmm. I’m quite taken aback at how many people are giving away their Twitter login details to Twitterank (‘with one r’). Lured in by the potential of an ego massage ‘to determine how worthy of a person you are in Twitterverse’ – er pardon?!
The site taunts the user by claiming that the ‘Twitterank algorithm is vewy vewy secwet‘ – um probably as your passwords should be!
Basically what you get for your password is a useless, random looking number and a link back to Twitterank on your Twitter stream. It looks like nothing more than a phishing scam and I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that participants end up with ‘SUCKER’ or equivalent amusing ditty posted on their stream sometime soon OR if whoever is behind it coming out to show that it’s all been a big hoax to show what daft followers of fads we can be and even dafter with our security 
Oh yes, the ‘fail’ page with a sheep plushy on a laptop was a cute (or was that curt?) message to those following the link. Anyway, for those who have done it already, it’s prolly a good idea to change your password!
Anyway, this is all obvious, right?!
Anyways, here’s a nice screenshot of the Twitterank homepage incase it disappears as mysteriously as it arrived! This site says a lot about how we are allowing ourselves to be groomed by the likes of Facebook to use / trust any old crud application / API for a bit of instant gratification to share with our interwebby comrades.
Must be a slow web week for me to get ranty over something that’s possibly a 15 minute fame piece for the author… Apologies if my comments are a little acid, but I’ve had dreadful indigestion all evening – goodnight, m’dearszzzzz
UPDATE: Here’s what I found commented in the source code, so was Twitterank all about shocking people into thinking about how vanity and sheep following can make you lose your reasoning so easily – a kind of cautionary tale OR has the person behind it commented out their words because they decided to act a bit more sinister after all? Who knows – guess we’ll may find out later – or not!
“<!–
I am about to ask you for your Twitter user ID and password. You should be afraid. This is where you ask yourself, “Do I really want to find out my twitterank badly enough to give some random dude on teh interweb my account info?” And if that’s not what you’re asking yourself, shame on you.
//–>
<!–
Hi! Yes, the text you see above was there when Twitterank first launched, because giving away your user name and password to untrusted 3rd parties really is a bad idea. I took it out because it was verbose, and it didn’t seem to deter people.
//->”
Oook!
Twitterank = Twitterwank?
Hmm. I’m quite taken aback at how many people are giving away their Twitter login details to Twitterank (‘with one r’). Lured in by the potential of an ego massage ‘to determine how worthy of a person you are in Twitterverse’ – er pardon?!
The site taunts the user by claiming that the ‘Twitterank algorithm is vewy vewy secwet‘ – um probably as your passwords should be!
Basically what you get for your password is a useless, random looking number and a link back to Twitterank on your Twitter stream. It looks like nothing more than a phishing scam and I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that participants end up with ‘SUCKER’ or equivalent amusing ditty posted on their stream sometime soon OR if whoever is behind it coming out to show that it’s all been a big hoax to show what daft followers of fads we can be and even dafter with our security
Oh yes, the ‘fail’ page with a sheep plushy on a laptop was a cute (or was that curt?) message to those following the link. Anyway, for those who have done it already, it’s prolly a good idea to change your password!
Anyway, this is all obvious, right?!
Anyways, here’s a nice screenshot of the Twitterank homepage incase it disappears as mysteriously as it arrived! This site says a lot about how we are allowing ourselves to be groomed by the likes of Facebook to use / trust any old crud application / API for a bit of instant gratification to share with our interwebby comrades.
Must be a slow web week for me to get ranty over something that’s possibly a 15 minute fame piece for the author… Apologies if my comments are a little acid, but I’ve had dreadful indigestion all evening – goodnight, m’dearszzzzz
UPDATE: Here’s what I found commented in the source code, so was Twitterank all about shocking people into thinking about how vanity and sheep following can make you lose your reasoning so easily – a kind of cautionary tale OR has the person behind it commented out their words because they decided to act a bit more sinister after all? Who knows – guess we’ll may find out later – or not!
“<!–
I am about to ask you for your Twitter user ID and password. You should be afraid. This is where you ask yourself, “Do I really want to find out my twitterank badly enough to give some random dude on teh interweb my account info?” And if that’s not what you’re asking yourself, shame on you.
//–>
<!–
Hi! Yes, the text you see above was there when Twitterank first launched, because giving away your user name and password to untrusted 3rd parties really is a bad idea. I took it out because it was verbose, and it didn’t seem to deter people.
//->”
Oook!
3 Comments
Posted in comment, rant
Tagged password, phising social engineering, scam rating twitterverse, twitterank cloud computing twitter security login passw