Happy new year to one and all. I hope that 2013 brings you joy and happiness.

I’ve started 2013 by having my twitter account hacked. This was not the standard hack where your password is broken and your account stolen. This was more subtle by far.

I follow a number of people on twitter. Most are of interests because of the info posted and some friends and colleagues etc.

A couple of months ago I received a message (DM) from a former colleague with a link to a facebook page. The tweet said something along the lines of ”You are famous” – and included a link to a facebook page. I am usually wise to this kind of thing but it was early in the morning and this person may have had a picture or two of me a few years back that they could have posted it and sent me a message to let me know.

I followed the link and, stupidly, authenticated. Nothing happened – there was no picture.

A month down the line and I received another message from a colleague saying that I’d sent them a weird link. I was able to join the dots and work out what had happened but it was harder than I thought to fix.

Firstly you need to login to both facebook and twitter and change your password.

The you need to login to facebook and twitter and disable all the apps that you have associated. This is a real nuisance but it is the only way to fix the problem because the app that has your permission does not show itself as ”stupid viral spam app” nor does it show the correct date.

It means that I have to re-permission all of my apps but there was a ton of junk in there so I’m not that worried.

Hope this helps someone avoid what happened to me.