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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
A number of the city's social media enthusiasts swung into damage control mode last week after their Twitter micro blogging accounts were hit with a nasty virus.

At least one Yellowknife MLA, a city councillor, as well as city organizations and individuals, fell victim to a spam application that sent direct messages with a corrupted link to the in-boxes of their followers. Frame Lake MLA Wendy Bisaro and Coun. Cory Vanthuyne both warned followers to avoid opening links from their Tweets on Friday.

"If you received a direct message from YKChamber, do not click on any links sent recently," stated a Jan. 4 tweet from the Yellowknife Chamber of Commerce's Twitter account, warning its 300-plus followers not to get their accounts compromised as well on the social media website.

Social media consultant Kyle Thomas said such cyber-attacks can strike communities in waves, and often have a cyclical effect.

"It's not that it's not happening everywhere else - it's happening across Twitter and there's millions of people on Twitter," Thomas said.

"It just so happens that once it starts to come into the community - where Yellowknife you know there's a couple hundred people on Twitter and we all follow each other because we all want to keep connected to each other - that it's a chain reaction. So if I clicked on that link and sent it out to all my followers, or the people that I follow, the large majority of those people are Yellowknifers, and then they would click it and send it back out to the same amount of followers. So you will see when it happened on Friday, it just kind of kept on going. So it becomes this massive chain effect if no one breaks the chain, then it will keep going."

In the latest round of spam, a "bot" or an automated script that had gained access to Twitter accounts, sent messages to Twitter followers saying that someone is saying nasty things on a blog about them, and then directing them to click a url, or webpage address, to see.

"Generally those messages that you'll see on Twitter like 'See the nasty things this person is saying about you on this blog,' are spam," Thomas said.

"The problem becomes when we're a small community like we are, there is a chance that I could have taken a picture of (city councillor) Cory Vanthuyne at a community event, and so then I could have done that but you've got to be really wary, even if it is someone that you know. You've got to remember that there is spam out there and you never quite know, so unless you know where that link is taking you and you can see the actual website url, don't click on it."

Once compromised, the first thing Thomas advises to do is to change one's account password, and disconnect any unfamiliar applications.

Then, especially for a small business, organization, or official, there is the damage control.

"You've got a reputation you've got to uphold where you're expected to kind of understand this stuff," Thomas said. "You want to try to talk to your followers and send out a bit of damage control saying 'Sorry, this happened, please don't click on any links.'"

People who this happens to are generally new to Twitter or new to social media, Thomas said, encouraging newcomers to do research, get training or ask around before starting.

The City of Yellowknife recently emerged on the social media scene, debuting its Twitter account, @OurYellowknife, last month.

So far, the account appears to be free of any spam.

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