Virus Alert : Tweet Viewer Worm Crawling Around Twitter !

Be careful what you click on when you’re using Twitter, because there is a “Tweet Viewer” worm afoot.

Under the guise of revealing who’s been visiting your Twitter profile, when you click on its link it asks for your Twitter authorization, and then tweets that same message to more unsuspecting users.

Keep in mind that merely clicking on the link is not going to automatically authorize anything — that only happens if you click the Authorize button after clicking the link. So, like many viruses, worms and scams, you have to actively give it to yourself, rather than having it attack you as you stand by innocently.

The worm appears like this (notice the tweetviewer link):

What to do if you’ve been caught up in this? It’s easy enough to go to Settings/Connection/Revoke Access, and then you’re free of it. Here’s the help page if you need more info. And now, link shortener Bit.ly has stopped the unpleasantness for now by blocking domains hosting those scam links. However, if the app you’re using to access Twitter still has permission to do so, it could keep spreading this nuisance with a different shortened link.