This article was published on March 5, 2011

Beware: Twitter scam app claims to show who visits your profile. It can’t.


Beware: Twitter scam app claims to show who visits your profile. It can’t.

A Twitter scam app which claims it help you see the people accessing your profile is proliferating across Twitter today, with users being duped into granting access to their Twitter accounts to spread the scam even wider.

The app, named “See Wh0 Viewed Y0ur Pr0file” requests access to a users’ Twitter account via OAuth (an authentication platform that won’t share your sensitive information), sending out two tweets once it has been approved:

WOW! You can see WHO VISITS your TWITTER profile. That’s cool! :) – http://bit.ly/tweetviewer

The second:

I just viewed my TOP20 Profile STALKERS. I can’t believe my EX is still checking me every day – http://bit.ly/tweetviewer

If you see these tweets, DO NOT click them, instead warn the person you follow that they may have granted access to an app that could be used to tweet scam messages. If you do click the link, make sure you do not allow the application to have access your account:

The scam began circulating last week. If you notice the name of the application, the developers have replaced the correct spelling with zeros. When it first appeared, the application was known “See Who Viewed Your Profile” but Twitter quickly disabled the app. Today’s inconvenience is being caused by the same application, but with a slightly altered name.

In a fifteen minute period, the scam app sent out 6972 tweets from Twitter user accounts:

If you have found you accidentally granted access to this application, you can remove it easily. Make sure you are logged into your Twitter account, click Settings and then Connections, making sure to revoke the application’s access.

Scams such as this will make their way across Twitter, just remember to be vigilant. Do not click links you don’t trust and never grant access to a Twitter application unless you are 100% sure it is safe.

Twitter’s Safety team looks to be on the case and will likely have the application removed soon. Del Harvey, a member of the Safety team, tweeted the following message just minutes ago:

Until then, be careful.

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