Published Saturday, 27 February 2010
"I am back! Hackers are a real nuisance!" The east Belfast MLA tweeted on Friday morning.
In recent days, the social networking site has been hit by a wave of phishing scams stealing users' identities after they clicked on links such as "This you????" and "LOL this is funny".
The compromised accounts are then used by hackers to distribute more rogue messages to other users.
On Thursday, Ms Purvis warned her followers to ignore tweets sent under her name saying "is this you?
"Don't click on the link!" She wrote.
"Apologies everyone who has been getting spam from me - someone has been phishing my account", she later tweeted.
Passwords
The malicious links direct users to pages that look just like the Twitter home page, where people are conned into entering their login details and giving away their password.
Twitter wrote on their blog: "Over the past few days, we've seen an increase in phishing attempts and are working on resetting passwords for accounts that were affected.
"While we've updated about these attacks via both @safety and @spam, we felt that it was important to post a more complete alert.
"If you receive a DM (direct mail) or see a message with a phrase like 'This you??' or 'LOL is this you' followed by a link, please do not click through; there's a phishing site on the other side.
"While simply receiving this message does not mean your account is compromised, if you do click through and enter your username and password, you'll want to change your password.
"If you've received this type of spam from a friend, you may want to alert them to change their password."
High-profile victims have included Energy Secretary Ed Miliband and Leader of the Commons Harriet Harman who have both had automated fake messages sent from their accounts.
In Mr Miliband's case a tweet was sent out to his followers which read "hhey, i've been having better sex and longer with this here", with a link directing people to a website selling herbal viagra.
Graham Cluley, an internet security expert with Sophos, advised anyone who has been caught out to change their password immediately and delete any connections under the settings tab that they do not recognise.
Mr Cluley advised politicians to set a good example, saying: "With an election coming up, they want to appear down with the kids and use new technology to reach out to people more effectively.
"But they need to go back to the classroom to learn about basic computer security.
"They should be setting an example for the rest of us.
He added: "When politicians or celebrities get phished it's a very public compromise of their account.
"But what's happened over the last week is not just for MPs, everyone on Twitter is at risk of receiving these messages, which can be quite convincing.
"We're going to see this happening more and more. The criminals will be more and more attracted to using social networking sites to make money because that's where the people are."