Network World is reporting a new Twitter virus has been making the rounds today. At best the virus will auto-tweet this message: “Hey everyone, join StalkDaily.com. It’s a site like Twitter but with pictures, videos and so much more.” At worst, it may lock you out of your Twitter account as noted by Sheamus Bennett at Twittercism.
“Whatever you do,” suggests Bennett, “don’t visit StalkDaily.com. Even without registering or logging on to the site it somehow infects your Twitter profile.” Curt Monash over on Network World, however, suggests you can get infected without visiting the site; clicking on the GangsterBoy Twitter account could be enough to cause the infection.
While no one has been able to verify what is going on and we have had no official word from Twitter [update below], Bennet recommends the following steps to remove StalkDaily from your Twitter profile if you think you’ve been infected.
- In your browser, clear your cache and empty all of your cookies. (This can be found in your settings.)
- Log out of TweetDeck or any external applications you are using.
- On Twitter.com, change your password.
- Log back in. It should be okay. If so, log back into TweetDeck et al.
- Go back and delete any tweets sent by you recommending StalkDaily. This is important.
Monash, who has been furiously sending messages to the @spam team to remove the seemingly malicious Gangsterboy account offers a suggestion from @pilot: disable scripts via NoScript in FireFox.
According to Bennett’s latest tweet, there have not been any new instances of it in quite a while.
Update:
Twitter’s Spam account has issued an update stating that it is aware of StalkDaily, is working to shut it down and recommends doing a password reset if you’re locked out of your account as it may have reset your password for safety reasons.
