If you are a member of Twitter and receive an email informing you of a direct message then treat it with caution, the website has warned.

Fraudulent emails masquerading as Twitter messages have been spotted in circulation, containing URLs that will actually take you to a spoofed Twitter site designed to steal personal information.

"The link redirects to a site masquerading as the Twitter front page," said Twitter's Biz Stone, writing on the Twitter blog.

"Look closely at the URL field, if it has another domain besides Twitter but looks exactly like our page then it's a fraud and you should not sign in," Stone continued.

Twitter, a micro-blogging service, lets members give short, 140-character updates about their activities to other members.

Stone warned that this phishing scam was aimed to steal credit card details, passwords and usernames.

Last week, Google warned of a phishing scam targeting users of Google Calendar.

"It would be bad enough to hand your Twitter username and password over to a criminal, as they could pose as you online and spread malware and spam to your friends and followers," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.

"However, as an alarming 41 per cent of internet users foolishly use the same username and password for every website they access, the potential for abuse is even greater," Cluley continued.

www.twitter.com
www.sophos.com

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