Barracuda Labs reports that the period during which celebrities began joining Twitter in early 2009 was also the time that the microblogging site became a serious target for cyberattacks.

"The trend for celebrities to have a Twitter feed led to a huge surge in public interest, which sucked in criminality, and so it has remained ever since with the company battling an ever more ingenious range of attacks feeding on the phenomenon," writes PCWorld's John E. Dunn.

"Nowadays, Twitter is like a slightly troubled neighborhood complete with its own crime rate, which as of October 2009 had reached 12 percent, which equates to the number of created accounts later suspended for suspect behavior by administrators," Dunn writes. "By comparison, in 2006 it was 1.2 percent, in 2007 1.7 percent, and 2008 2.2 percent."

Click here to read the PCWorld article.