I want to apologize to any of you who follow me on Twitter if you received a direct message from me saying “hey, I made $384 yesterday. this website showed me how.” Apparently my account was hacked because I may have clicked a link in a similar message from others in my network.

I had contacted two senders from whom I received the suspicious DMs with the shortened URL, and thought I was immune. A reader to my post at ValleyPRBlog confirmed that I too had taken the bait.)

So why are we so vulnerable to the garbage that gets  passed around the Twittersphere faster than you could say Phish? One word: Trust.

• We screen less: We are so inherently trusting of those in our network, we don’t always take time to check if the email jokes, the ‘Must Read This’ links, or the PPT attachments are safe.
• We click more. I tend to click more on a shortened URL because I see so much of them. The link economy teaches us to prefer clicking on links rather than typing a URL out.

I have made the point elsewhere that there will soon arise  Trusted Friends, or Network Curators, and these may not even be major brands; they could be individuals with great credentials. People we value, and… trust like crazy!

Speaking of which, I am about to purchase a book on the subject called Trust Agents –co-authored by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith. It comes highly recommended. Brogan’s original thesis for the book was that it was about: “people who use the web in a very human way to build influence, reputation, awareness, and who can translate that into some kind of business value.”