Twitter Finally Starts Filtering Malware Links [PC Security]

Microblogging site Twitter has been gaining popularity by leaps and bounds. People from all walks of life, whether tech-savvy or not, are getting addicted to this 140 character phenomenon. And the crowd includes not only the genuine users, but also the malware writers, rogues and people trying to infect your computer with their evil designs.

Twitter has long been accused of spreading malware because it uses URL shortening services to fit long URLs into the 140 character limit. The innocent followers do not know, where the shortened URL might lead to, they click on it and land up on a malware distributing webpage.

But not any more.

Twitter seems to have started filtering malware spreading URLs. To test this feature, I just tweeted a message containing a link to a known malware distributing site “http://gianttopdiscover.cn”.

Warning: Do not attempt to go to this site if you are not using the latest browsers, which cab block access to this site.

When I tried to access this site from Firefox 3.5.1, it was correctly identified as dangerous, and this is what I got.

To test, whether Twitter is able to block and filter this malware distributing site, I just posted this tweet. “Just Testing…Don’t go to gianttopdiscover.cn”.

It was correctly identified by Twitter. Twitter didn’t posted my tweet and this is what I got in response.

It is not yet officially announced, as far as I know, that they have started filtering links to malware sites, but it is understood that they are using Google Safe Searching API to filter the dangerous URLs.

All in all, a great step towards the right direction.

[A Guest Post from Silki Garg. She enjoys writing on Internet and PC Security. Her latest blog posts on stopping Clampi Trojan and Private Internet Browsing are sure to find some interest in you.]