Purpose

Dedicated to helping people make themselves safe and their Homes harder targets,...or when James Bond meets Soccer Mom




Saturday, June 26, 2010

Twitter Security Breaches - Twitter v FTC, re: Obama's Account

Twitter settles with FTC over breach that struck Obama's account, from a yahoo! news account.

A hack job that allowed intruders to take control of President Obama's Twitter account has resulted in a settlement at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

The agency unanimously voted to approve a settlement with Twitter after charging it with leaving the door open for hackers to take control of the site on two occasions last year. The negligence risked users' personal data and gave perpetrators a chance to hijack accounts, the FTC said on Thursday.

The breach extended to President Obama's account during the campaign. One tweet sent from his profile offered his over 150,000 followers a chance to win $500 worth of free gasoline.

The FTC charged that Twitter did not take reasonable steps to ensure user safety, including by requiring employees to use tough passwords and by suspending their passwords after several unsuccessful logins.

Under the settlement, Twitter has to create an information security program that an independent auditor will review every other year for 10 years.

Although Obama is a tempting targets for hackers, everyone, including us should utilize Passwords need to be random; think of a combination of UPPER CASE Letters, lower case letters, symbols such as #, $, &, * and numbers.

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