Twitter spam

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Many popular Internet services are measured by their success or failure in fighting spam and scams. Social bookmarking sites like Stumbleupon and Digg have loads of spam, as do social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. The latest Internet fad is Twitter and it is already having to fight off spam. A Twitter account @twittercut sent a flood of messages promising users a quick boost in followers; leading them to a website where they were asked to reveal their passwords. And nearly 13,000 users fell for this phishing scam!



Spammers are using automated programs to generate thousands of unsolicited messages and following thousands of unsuspecting users. It's called "follow spam" and it gets the spammers lots of eyeballs and clicks on their urls. Twitter now allows one user account to follow up to 2000 other users; but if less than 10% follow back, then that account cannot add more followers.

Spammy followers can also bombard users with messages pushing their products or services. "Our team is working on determining the best modes for combating spam to protect the quality of our product," said a Twitter spokeswoman. "We take spamming seriously and are working to suspend any accounts we feel are harassing the community."

Twitter now also has a captcha code at the account creation stage to prevent automated programs from creating fake accounts. The other spam problem will be fake Twitter accounts in the names of celebrities and companies, created by unscrupulous users; these will probably be weeded out using the report and disable method. Kanye West wrote on his blog about a fake Twitter account set up in his name. And gorgeous Cheryl Cole, the top sexiest female celebrity for 2009, had a fake Twitter account in her name which attracted 30,000 users! The scam was uncovered when the people behind the fake account led users to an adult website.