September 30, 2009, 7:02 AM — Apparently, there are people out there who want Twitter followers so badly they’re willing to pay for it. In fact, there must be quite a few, since scammers have come up with a way to steal financial information from such folks by offering to sell followers.
The scam works like this: A Twitter user you’ve probably never heard of starts following you. If you decide to figure out who it is by going to their Twitter page, you’ll see a tweet offering to sell “Twitter Users For You Every Day!” followed by a link.
A brave soul at security vendor Sophos decided to follow the link, and reports that it leads to a number of different options for buying followers. The scammer offers different packages with various amounts of followers, depending on your needs.
There’s also a fake link to PayPal, since you must pay for these followers. As the Sophos blogger points out, you would then not only being giving the scammer your money, but total access to your PayPal account.
One of the scams offers an ‘introductory rate’ of $5, but then bills your credit card for $99.50 a month. Which would actually cost you quite a bit more, since you’ve just given all your credit card information to a scammer…
Do you tweet? Follow me on Twitter here.
