In an effort to build its own popularity, social networking has played largely upon the individual’s craving for popularity. How many friends you have on Facebook, how many followers you have on Twitter, or how many connections you have on LinkedIn can all be perceived as indicators of an individual’s Internet popularity. Just yesterday, a worm hit Twitter that preyed upon such desires.

Thousands of users saw their friends appear post the message, “I just got over 1000 followers today from http://twittercut.com.”  Those who thought it advantageous to gain 1000 followers in one day were then lured to TwitterCut’s site, which looked remarkably similar to the Twitter login portal. Baited users would then enter login details at the TwitterCut site. Like many of the recent Facebook scams, TwitterCut would then use this information to send out the same message through the user who entered their information, allowing the worm to spread rapidly.

It does not appear that TwitterCut has used the retrieved logins for any other purposes yet, but those who may have given information should act quickly to change their passwords. Additionally, Twitter announced on Tuesday night that they were working to push password resets for infiltrated accounts. 

All told, this phishing scam serves as a reminder to social network users to be extremely cautious when entering usernames and passwords, double checking to reinsure that the site truly is what it claims to be.

It appears that today a new phisher has appeared on the scene. Some are tweeting to beware of SuMagik, or the site sumagic.info, which also requests an individual’s Twitter Name and Twitter Password. No info is given as to why this is requested, but the site does state, “We do not store twitter passwords, as we have no interest in your twitter account, and we hate scamming cheats too!” Sound a little phishy to me!