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Stolen Twitter accounts appear to be commanding a premium amongst hackers sharing details on forums.

Data stealing software is a risk to your details for any site, but according to Kaspersky researcher Dmitry Bestuzhev, he’s seen  a Twitter account with just 320 followers offered for as much as $1000. In this case, the three-letter username may have influenced the price.

That compares with Gmail accounts for $82, Rapidshare accounts for $5 per month, and other sites including Skype and Facebook. Bestuzhev also went on to say Kaspersky had detected 70,000 data stealing programmes in 2009, which is twice as many as in 2008.

Twitter is likely to be a preferred route to spread malware as links can spread in near real-time to hundreds or thousands of followers – each of whom can quickly and easily repeat a malware message to their own network.

Malware messages are also hidden by shortened urls, and with the amount of links spread via Twitter, there’s a good chance people are less suspicious than seeing the same links in an email or IM message.

It’s a reminder to make sure you use a unique password which is a mix of alphanumeric characters, and to change it regularly. Be careful of sharing it with third party sites and tools which aren’t using Twitter’s OAuth protocol, and be careful with links being posted by others – even including people you trust.

(Via Computerworld)