X automatically changed 'Twitter' to 'X' in users' posts, breaking legit URLs
mashable.com
A scammer's dream and a disaster waiting to happen.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/14106579

On Monday, it appears X attempted to encourage users to cease referring to it as Twitter and instead adopt the name X. Some users began noticing that posts viewed via X for iOS were changing any references of “Twitter.com” to “X.com” automatically.

If a user typed in “Twitter.com,” they would see “Twitter.com” as they typed it before hitting “Post.” But, after submitting, the platform would show “X.com” in its place on the X for iOS app, without the user’s permission, for everyone viewing the post.

And shortly after this revelation, it became clear that there was another big issue: X was changing anything ending in “Twitter.com” to “X.com.”

  • idkmybffjoeysteel [he/him]English
    3•3 months ago

    Without clicking through to the article myself I want an example of this, can’t think of any websites that end in Twitter.

    • JayTwo [any]English
      10•3 months ago

      The concern is that scammers can create fake phishy versions of sites that end in “__x.com” as ___twitter.com to trick Twitter users into divulging passwords or other sensitive info. Because to the Twitter user it’ll look like the genuine site that ends with __x.com on the Twitter app but it won’t actually be.

      Some examples of sites already made to prevent scammers from using them are:
      Netflitwitter, Ametwitter, Fedetwitter, and Roblotwitter, dot com, which falsely showed as Netflix, Amex, FedEx, and Roblox, dot com.
      Though I think they (xitter programmers) already manually added exceptions for the examples that trended which stopped that from happening, for those specific examples.

    • booty [he/him]English
      7•3 months ago

      The problem is that you can make websites that end in twitter. An example used in the article is someone makes a site called “netflitwitter.com” and posts a link to it on twitter. Twitter will now display it as “netflix.com” and if you click it it sends you to “netflitwitter.com”

      Twitter is now a phishing paradise, in other words.