Actress-singer Maris Racal alerted online users about clicking a link on Twitter that unleashes spam posts on unsuspecting users.
The artist apologized to her 3.8 million followers for “incoming spam tweets” that they might encounter on their Twitter feed since she clicked a link claiming to know users who visited their profile.
“I clicked on this who visits your account thingy and virus pala siya,” she tweeted on Wednesday with an upside-down emoji.
“Changed my password already. Hope that fixed it,” Maris added in another tweet.
Some Twitter users who read her post warned their mutuals about the spam.
Others claimed of encountering the similar link and spam tweets.
“OMG! Kaya pala may iba pa akong tweets na posted kanina tapos pare-parehas lang. ‘Wag na talagang ma-curious next time. Haha!” a Twitter user said, quote tweeting Maris.
“Kaya pala ‘yung iba sa feed ko [ulit ulit] ‘yung tweets about that who viewed their profile, ganon. Waaaa,” another online user responded.
The link in question has the name “askforme.me” and has the following thumbnail, as recently shared by a Twitter user:
In 2018, a lead malware intelligence analyst warned the public about the spam which lures users into thinking they will get to know who has visited their Twitter profiles.
“At the time of testing, all this [spam link] seemed to do was promote the app across timelines and encourage more installs, so the main aggravation here is the knowledge that you installed something useless, and then started beaming said uselessness to all of your contacts,” Christopher Boyd said.
“No matter how you come across these sites, we’d advise you not to bother giving these apps permission. The ‘See who visited you’ routine has been around for years on Twitter and Tumblr, and going even further back to Myspace. In all cases, none of these things ever seem to work and only serve to annoy, spam ads, or offer surveys,” he added.
Boyd said that users can remove the app by heading over to the Apps and Sessions tab on Twitter via Settings and Support > Settings and Privacy > Security and Account Access.
They can “revoke” an app’s permission through the “Connected Apps” tab.