Moving at the Speed of Creativity - Avoid Twply.com and change your Twitter password frequently

Avoid Twply.com and change your Twitter password frequently

Published by Wesley Fryer in web 2.0 on January 2nd, 2009

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Several days ago I tweeted:

does anyone else wonder if sites like http://tweetree.com are just harvesting userids and passwords? We should be wary of sites like this

My sentiment for that tweet is confirmed by Cliff Ravenscraft’s post “Warning Twitter Users! Do Not Use Twply.com!” from today. Cliff writes that when users login to Twply:

… if you click “Yep, go ahead!,” without notifying you, the service LOGS INTO YOUR TWITTER ACCOUNT and makes a post ON YOUR ACCOUNT saying “Just started using http://twply.com/ to get my @replies via email. Neat stuff!”

Not only are you providing your Twitter userid to the owners of Twply, you are also giving them your password and potentially permission to post AS YOU on Twitter. Users beware.

photo credit: solidstate.

Thanks Anna Adam for the heads-up.

I know it is painful and not fun, but it is also a VERY good idea to change your Twitter password frequently AND use secure passwords. Not a message I’m sure you wanted to hear today, but none-the-less it is an important one. These are all important aspects of media literacy and digital citizenship!

Technorati Tags:
twitter, twply

On this day..

3 Comments »

http://www.mrbassonline.com Bill Bass

I was wondering about that after I saw a post that another person (who I respect greatly) had started using it. I looked at the site and saw the little disclaimer, “Your password is safe with us. No worries!” and immediate thought that I probably had reason to worry. I’ve logged in to another service before but soon changed my password for that very reason. This time I chose not to participate for the very reasons you name. Thanks for spreading the word.
http://blog.cathyjonelson.com Cathy Nelson

It may have been a kneejerk reaction, but I immediately went and changed my password. I do not use that service, but have freely given my username/password to some other twitter services. I only did it to “check” them out, see what the fuss was, only to turn my back and never use them again. So this was definitely a timely post or me. Thanks for being vigilant and sharing with your network, Wes.
http://www.wesfryer.com Wesley Fryer

James Deaton pointed me to http://replies.twitapps.com as an alternative to twply.com which does NOT solicit or require users’ twitter passwords.