Several Political twitter accounts "...caught the twitter bug"

While in job search mode (5 year assignment with IBM ended July 15th) I have been less inclined to blog or tweet from my the accounts I created for the Municipal  @TorontoVote and Federal elections  @CanVote while I applied my efforts to job hunting account @yorkcent (texts to my phone) and interviews but this recent bug going around prompted me to warn others and protect themselves or check first to see if someone else has warned the person that sent you the direct message already.

Here are just 3 examples that I have found, and each one (according to their twitter stream) was able to correct the problem by changing their twitter password

Someone said this real bad thing about you in a blog…

or
New App., it shows me who ‘stalks’ my twitter

or
cheap d.... (I'm not even going to spell it out, we all recongnize this spam so my blog doesn't get flagged as spam) 

As I use Google Chrome and Gmail, all of these direct emails landed up in my spam so I knew the some of the links in Google Chrome would be blocked and I received the Phishing warning page when did click the 1st link, and instead of bank information, it probably tricks users into providing their twitter password

Warning: Suspected phishing site!

The website at berichtenversturen.com has been reported as a “phishing” site. Phishing sites trick users into disclosing personal or financial information, often by pretending to represent trusted institutions, such as banks.

Learn more about phishing scams.

Report an error

If you feel you understand the risks, you may proceed anyway.

I also like to thank Matt's twitter account  @democracy101ca  for acknowledging they caught the bug and blogging about it. http://democracy101.ca/2011/07/27/we-caught-a-twitter-bug-this-morning

I also commented,
My previous blog written June 5th about setting up a google alert for your name during a job search should have warned you if someone really had written bad things about you in a blog, it also adds a little humour in you mailbox when you see your obituary or that Hugo Boss has named a suit after you.

Job Search - Google yourself

During my job search, I have read several experts suggest to do a Google search of myself. I appeared 7 out of 10 times on the first page when I searched James Sharp Toronto. Adding Toronto was a lot more productive than simply searching James Sharp as I show up in history as an Archbishop, Mayor of 2 cities and 2 footballers but I did appear 2 out of 12 times in that search.

The above was not an Ego Surfing, it was to confirm I have nothing I want seen by potential employers Four years ago a study found. "... one-fifth of hiring managers have used the Internet to find personal information about potential job candidates, and a quarter of those have rejected candidates based on what they found."

The figures keep getting higher as one expert on linkedin suggests 70% of employers have rejected a job candidate because of information they found about that person online, and 85% of employers say that a positive online reputation influences their hiring decisions http://learn.linkedin.com/jobseeker/jss_webinar.pdf

On that positive note, I clicked on a link I had not heard of before, unlike so many other pay for use web name search services this one is free.

James Sharp in Toronto, ON | Technology | Profile at PeekYou

James Sharp - Technology - See James's contact info, work history, school affiliations and other information on PeekYou.
www.peekyou.com/james_sharp/310254008 - United States - 

The above profile only had two of my twitter feeds and but had linkedin profiles for other persons in Canada. When I tried to add my own I had to replace CA. with WWW.  In order for the program to accept it.

When it didn't get added quickly, I read the disclaimer Any links that are submitted to www.peekyou.com will be passed through our search engine and matching algorithm, to ensure that they are indeed related to this person. In the event that our search engine believes it has a match, it will display the link on this page. Links are NOT automatically added to a page upon submission of this form.


So I hope this Blog entry will help get my linked in profile http://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesdsharp finally recognized on this search engine and pushed up further on others