Guardian Technology reported that an ex-Yahoo employee managed to persuade “lots” of Twitter users to surrender their account passwords in exchange for the promise of being told their ranking.

Sound familiar? The InfoSecurity Europe team conducts a similar survey every year in the run up to the show by getting people to swap their passwords for chocolate bar.

Admittedly, the Twitter experiment was far more sophisticated and I’m sure those that were duped believed Twitterank.com had a genuine affiliation with the site, but at the end of the day it’s just another example of how easily people can slip up online and give away more than they bargain for. Will we never learn?

In a guest post on ZD Net, the ex-Yahoo staffer in question commented that it was “not some grand scheme to steal thousands of Twitter accounts, but a casual experiment gone horribly horribly right.”

So, if you intend to be busy tweeting over the weekend, treat potential scams with the same caution you would on any of your other online accounts. Just because it’s a fun, informal and seemingly harmless tool, don’t be fooled - it’s still part of your online identity and it needs protecting.

Rebecca Wheeler