FTC Puts Social Nets on Notice With Twitter Smackdown

via E-Commerce News

The FTC has settled its beef with Twitter over the service’s security practices. Twitter will go on a probation of sorts, and some conditions of the arrangement will remain in effect for 20 years. The charges originated when hackers took advantage of weak passwords the site had been using and gained administrative privileges that enabled them to control accounts and read private messages.

Twitter has agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it deceived consumers and put their privacy at risk by failing to safeguard users’ personal information, the FTC announced Thursday.

In what was the agency’s first such case against a social networking service, the FTC charged that serious lapses in Twitter’s data security Planning for the next peak season? Ensure your website is fast, secure and available 24/7. Click here to learn how. practices allowed hackers to obtain unauthorized administrative control of Twitter, including access to nonpublic user information, tweets that users had designated as private, and the ability to send out phony message from any account — including one belonging to Barack Obama, who at the time was the U.S. President-Elect…