Why would you follow someone who never tweets?

I got this message from Twitter saying that @Cayovaofficial had started following me.

Cayovaofficial? Never heard of him, her or them – but it’s always nice when you get a new follower, so I went and looked.

I’m puzzled. Now I know that I simply don’t understand modern networking, but really…

How on earth to you accumulate 32,640 Twitter followers when you have never produced a single tweet to follow? No, really, how do you do that?

I know I’m missing something, but for the life of me I don’t know what. Incidentally, I didn’t become the 32,641st follower.

My stories for Infosecurity Magazine, 07 May to 11 May

Pirate Bay defends Virgin Media while founder Peter Sunde faces jail

It is with some irony that The Pirate Bay (TPB) came to the defense of Virgin Media (TalkTalk was also disrupted) after the ISP’s website was taken down by Anonymous.
11 May 2012

BeyondTrust acquires vulnerability management company eEye Digital Security
BeyondTrust, a company that provides privilege delegation and authorization systems with its PowerBroker suite of products, has acquired eEye Digital Security, developer of the Blink and Retina vulnerability management tools.
11 May 2012

Member and spokesperson for TeaMp0isoN arrested in Newcastle
A 17-year old has been arrested in Newcastle by the Police Central eCrime Unit (PCeU) and local Northumbrian Police officers for alleged offenses under the Computer Misuse Act.
11 May 2012

Winners and losers in European card fraud
FICO has produced an interactive map of Europe, showing the evolving European fraud landscape between 2006 and 2011.
10 May 2012

DigiNinja analyzes the Twitter hack, and offers password advice to web services
Yesterday we reported that 55,000 Twitter accounts have been leaked on Pastebin. Security researchers Anders Nilsson and Robin Wood have separately analyzed the dump.
10 May 2012

Queen’s Speech announces ‘measures… to access vital communications data’
As expected, the Queen’s Speech yesterday announced the intention of the UK Government to bring forward (during the current parliamentary session) measures to allow law enforcement and intelligence agencies access to ‘vital communications data’.
10 May 2012

Net neutrality becomes law in The Netherlands
The net neutrality provisions approved by the Dutch Parliament last June as part of its implementation of the European telecommunications package became law yesterday.
09 May 2012

False Facebook account leads to Principal’s resignation
Louise Losos, principal of Clayton High School, Missouri, has resigned following accusations that she created a false persona on Facebook and befriended hundreds of her own students.
09 May 2012

Twitter fights two information security battles
Twitter is in the unenviable position of being ‘attacked’ on all sides: while it tries to fight a subpoena demanding the account details of Occupy protestor Malcolm Harris, hackers release thousands of user logon details on Pastebin.
09 May 2012

Analysis shows social networks increasingly used to spread malware
In its latest monthly analysis of the most prevalent malware, GFI describes how social networks remain the most popular breeding ground for infections.
08 May 2012

“Good on ya’ Mozilla”, says Sophos about Firefox
Firefox is developing a new feature called ‘click-to-play’ designed to provide additional protection for web browsing – but not everyone thinks this is necessarily useful.
08 May 2012

Syrian activists targeted with RATs
There have been several recent examples of Syrian activists being tricked into downloading and installing remote access tools (RATs) that secretly hand control of their computers to a third party.
08 May 2012

PandaLabs malware report – and the balance between law enforcement and user
Almost one-in-four computers in the UK is infected – and the UK is one of the least infected countries in the world, says the new PandaLabs report released today.
07 May 2012

Infosecurity Magazine news stories for 8/9 March 2012

My news stories on Infosecurity Magazine for Thursday 8 March and Friday 9 March…

Rogue anti-virus up and Kelihos botnet is back
GFI Software’s report for February highlights two main issues: the incidence of rogue anti-virus is continuing to increase; and the Kelihos botnet ‘taken down’ last year is resurgent.
09 March 2012

Today’s #FFF hack by Anonymous is a police equipment store
Anonymous has vowed to do a hack every Friday, calling it the #FFF campaign. Today AntiSec defaced the New York Ironworks, a police equipment supplier that describes itself as ‘NYC’s finest police equipment & tactical op’s gear store.’
09 March 2012

Vatican website DDoS’d by Anonymous
Following the AntiSec attack on PandaLabs on Tuesday, Anonymous ‘besieged’ Vatican websites on Wednesday – probably with a DDoS attack.
09 March 2012

CPA may help local authorities reduce data loss
Becrypt’s DISK Protect full-disk encryption product is the first commercial product to be granted CPA certification. By encrypting local authority laptops, it may help prevent the continuous leakage of personal data.
08 March 2012

Fake social network profiles take advantage of social ‘face bragging’
Most people have a desire to demonstrate that their own friend list is bigger than their friends’ friend lists – and it’s exposing them to fake friends.
08 March 2012

EDPS delivers Opinion on the EU data protection reforms
The European Data Protection Supervisor Peter Hustinx has delivered his formal Opinion on the current EU data protection reforms; and finds them wanting. He starts with the “EDPS applauds…” and ends with “but…”
08 March 2012