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Ben Wilson

Ben Wilson

ben wilson This is the blog of a one Ben Wilson, a Louisville, Kentucky native who enjoys baseball, beer, music, bikes, things that fly and good food. By day he pushes pixels and makes the Internet happen for a local advertising agency. His wife, Kelly is an Ironman, and his baby Amelia is the cutest thing ever.

If you are a Twitterer, you’ve probably received an unexpected direct message from a friend in the last couple of weeks that looked something like this:

or maybe this:

haha. This you???? http://foo.ws/KD7P

Whatever you do, DON’T CLICK ON THE LINK IN THE MESSAGES. These are examples of a rapidly-spreading Twitter hijacking “worm”.  I haven’t seen a good explanation of the how or why this is so prevalent, but when I see some even my most web-saavy friends (you know who you are), and even the Internet legend Cory Doctorow being duped, I figure it’s high time to make a post.

WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT

While I don’t have any hard-and-fast info on how or why this is spreading, there are two easy things you can do:

1. Typical phishing-prevention steps: review all links before you click on them.  Does the URL say TWITTER.COM or does it say TWITTAR.BIZ? Yeah. I realize this might not be possible on a mobile device, so exercise caution.

2. Update your password to something complex. A little uppercase, a little lowercase, a number. e.g. FooB4r! (and no, that isn’t my password)

3. Check your “Connections” on Twitter. Review them all and remove any that look suspicious.

filed under Teh Internets,Work and then tagged as ,
Feb 26 2010 ~ 8:45 am ~ Comments (1) ~
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Co-worker, talented illustrator and all-round nice guy Mason Ploch recently had one of his political cartoons published in the Courier-Journal. Excellent art and a good zinger of a gag, too :)

filed under Politics,Work and then tagged as ,,
Sep 12 2008 ~ 12:47 pm ~ Comments Off ~
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I am happy to say that as many meetings over websites that I’ve attended in the past 10 years or so, none of them have ever been this bad. Though some have come close.

filed under Web,Work and then tagged as ,
Apr 25 2008 ~ 7:48 am ~ Comments Off ~
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