Twitter to block malicious links

Twitter is launching a new service designed to stop users of the social-media site from getting duped by phishing links that steal their login credentials and other attacks.

The company will route all links submitted to the site through a filter created to catch links that lead to malware, the company said on the Twitter blog on Tuesday.

"A couple weeks ago, Biz [Stone, Twitter co-founder] explained how Twitter users were being victimized by phishing scams spread primarily through links in direct messages," the post said. "Basically, people click the link and bad things happen. My team can only detect these scams after malicious links have already been sent out."

With the new filtering service, even if a bad link is already sent out in an e-mail notification and somebody clicks on it, the user will be safe, according to the post.

The filtering will focus on links sent via direct messages and e-mail notifications about direct messages since the attacks occur primarily in those communications.