How-to Remove Mikeyy Worm from Twitter Profile

Mikeyy is variant of an internet worm spreading through the Twitter stream disguise itself under a short url, which looks legitimate but it’s not. It hijacks the twitter user account who clicked on the disguised link.

What it does?

• It takes over your twitter account and spread messages using your username
• Changes links and profile information
• It spreads messages like “Twitter, freaking fix this already. >:[ – Mikeyy” and “This worm is getting out of hand Twitter. – Mikeyy“

How to remove it?

• First of all close down your desktop applications like Twhirl and any other.
• Turn off javascript from your browser or get the firefox extension NOScript, it disables any javascripts by default.
  
• Now load your browser and edit your twitter profile, delete of anything that you didn’t put there.
• Reset your password as soon as you can.
• If your account is locked you can always ask twitter for a reset password option here
• Now some additional option for the users of TweetDeck 0.25, this version of TweetDeck allows you to see a short url preview before launching it. Enable that option first in settings
  
  Enable the option in settings page

  
  Sample preview of a short url

Additionally:

• Check your system with a virus checker such as Kaspersky antivirus or SpyBot Search and destroy.
• Stop going to visit the Web Profile of any twitter user for the moment until it’s completely sorted out.
• Use TweetDeck for safety as described above.
• Regularly keep eyes on the Trends listed at http://search.twitter.com and additionally you might find the solution over there too.

As you can see from the first Image of this post a lot of people is being infected and exploited. Even though twitter uses pretty little personal information but this kind of security holes can bring panic to the entire network. If you follow the steps above, you should be out of the panic zone in no time.

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