Beware of Malicious Twitter Invitation

Peter Cashmore of Mashable.com reports that a spoof email is circulating around the Internet inviting users to connect via Twitter.  Instead of containing a link, the spoof asks users to download a zip file which contains a nasty email harvesting worm.

Here is a photo of the fake email:

As Peter notes, this spoof capitalizes on the fact that Twitter has become very well known, meaning that people who don't know much about it might still be inclined to download a file.  A legitimate Twitter invite, of course, contains a link to the inviter's Twitter page where you can click to follow or block.

I suspect that some hacker will soon corrupt this process, meaning that like PayPal, you will want to avoid directly clicking a link in an email – instead you will want to head directly to your Twitter account and deal with followers directly from your home base.