Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Google's Nexus One twitter account hacked?

http://www.SharingMyOpinion.com

@googlenexusone spams followers.


After several months without a tweet, the normally quiet, reserved, almost shy twitter account @googlenexusone decided to let one rip... and man, what a stinker.

Being a Nexus One owner, I was glad to see the account tweeting again and was eager to find out what goodies/updates/announcements were being unleashed on N1 owners.
Apart from a link, the only other clue to what the announcement was about was the tweet itself... "Hottest new diet". Strangely enough the first thing that came to mind was Gingerbread... Awesome! I thought as I proceeded to click on the link. I hesitated for a second when I noticed TinyURL was being used as the URL shortening service instead of Google's own "goo.gl", that second was long enough for the destination URL to be exposed.
Even though "news6reporting.net/diet/" did not sound like a domain Google would own, let alone use to promote something about the Nexus One, I thought to myself, "stranger things have happened" and clicked on the link.

Instead of being redirected to news6reporting.net/diet/ like I had expected, I was redirected to http://tinyurl.com/nospam.php?id=3977rka where a message was waiting that said...

URL Terminated

The TinyURL (3977rka) you visited was used by its creator in violation of our terms of use. TinyURL has a strict no abuse policy and we apologize for the intrusion this user has caused you. Such violations of our terms of use include:

    * Spam - Unsolicited Bulk E-mail
    * Fraud or Money Making scams
    * Malware
    * or any other use that is illegal.

If you received spam, please note that TinyURL did not send this spam and we do not operate any email lists. We can not remove you from spammer's database as we have no association with spammers, but instead we recommend you use spam filtering software.

Followers respond
Doh!

Bummed, and still unsure whether TinyURL had got it right (False positive maybe?) I was also curious to see (if it was spam), what sort of spam @googlenexusone was tweeting.
So proceeding with caution, I armed myself with Rex Swain's HTTP Viewer to reveal what the page contained. (just in case it also contained malware).

It was revealed that news6reporting.net/diet/ is indeed spam.
Not only is it spam, its also a scam that makes false health claims about Acai Berries in an attempt to lure victims into paying astronomical prices for something that tastes like rubbish and is no better for you than half an orange. There is also the obligatory fake comments to back up the false claims...

So, was Google's Nexus One twitter account hacked?, or was it not theirs to begin with? I actually thought that it used to be a verified account, but doesn't seem to be now.

Cheers

UPDATE:
Seems as though whoever is in charge of the account has got it sorted (for now).

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