Mashable - The Social Media Guide - Latest Comments in Twitter Spam Spirals Out of Control

Re: Twitter Spam Spirals Out of Control

David Shantz - WildOutWest — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 04:25:13 -0000

Critical issue, covered insightfully by Mashable - as usual. How can Twitter survive even a year with out addressing it. Soon they will be using sophisticated tools to scour for duplicate messages/cross links and altering user agreements.

Re: Twitter Spam Spirals Out of Control

David Shantz - WildOutWest — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 03:51:51 -0000

Re: Twitter Spam Spirals Out of Control

David Shantz - WildOutWest — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 03:49:43 -0000

Re: Twitter Spam Spirals Out of Control

Christine — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 12:16:27 -0000

The twitter spammers are missing the boat...reciprocity is required (as others here have mentioned) in order for the spam to be visible. So, let them follow us! It doesn't clutter up my stream, or have any impact upon my use of twitter. I never see their content.

The spam accounts and associated content will, however (a) clutter up the public stream, and (b) create some annoying extra traffic for twitter servers. But do that many folks really try to keep tabs on the public timeline?

Re: Twitter Spam Spirals Out of Control

The Tuesday Night Tech Show — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 09:32:28 -0000

Yes, Twitter--DO SOMETHING to stop this nonsense of the people who follow over FOUR THOUSAND people and then want to follow me. It's dumb, I won't follow them back and it just wastes time to go to the Twitter site to notice that these are bots. How about when they send the e-mail from a potential follower, it shows the actual stats of the person trying to follow you? It would save me a trip to the Twitter site to NOT follow them anyway.

Re: Twitter Spam Spirals Out of Control

Hdunce — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 13:04:41 -0000

There are 12 people following @thebible. NOW WHAT DOES THAT SAY ABOUT THE PEOPLE ON TWITTER? OMYGODLESS.

Re: Twitter Spam Spirals Out of Control

Kevin — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 12:33:53 -0000

A lot of these spammers do it to try and grab people who still use "auto follow" - the setting where you automatically follow anyone who follows you. Simple disable that and I think a lot of perceived attractiveness for Tweet spammers would disappear.

That and CAPTCHA - I agree with everyone else, frsutrating the ability to use bots to mass follow would likely help a great deal.

Re: Twitter Spam Spirals Out of Control

mdy — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 23:32:44 -0000

I voted yes for the poll since the question was:
"Is it time for Twitter to move aggressively to prevent spammy accounts?"

I don't, however, think that captcha is the way to go, since people can still follow from their phones simply by sending 'follow username' via sms. They can also follow people through any of third-party apps that use the API by sending the same command. It will be tricky to implement the traditional web captcha through those channels.

Also, if it turns out that some form of captcha will be used, I think it should only be required if UserA follows UserB AND UserB does not yet follow UserA. Someone who chooses to reciprocate with a follow-back shouldn't have to jump through the same hoops.

Re: Twitter Spam Spirals Out of Control

Stop Twitter Spam — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 23:14:21 -0000

It's good to see the visibility of this issue being raised with posts like this. A few things that I wanted to add:

1) If you feel that you are being spammed by someone, the best thing that you can do is block that user. You should also submit a 'spam report' here:
http://twitter.com/help
(select 'spam report' from the drop-down)

Twitter is using both of these methods to monitor spam on Twitter and they ARE taking action (terminating the account).

2) There is an active discussion going on at Get Satisfaction about the use of CAPTCHA when following new users. If you have thoughts/ideas on this please add your comments there. Twitter uses Get Satisfaction as their primary platform for these kinds of issues.
http://getsatisfaction.com/...

3) If you have thoughts/ideas on how to report a spammer, please contribute to this discussion on Get Satisfaction:
http://getsatisfaction.com/...

Re: Twitter Spam Spirals Out of Control

Mr. Ilarijs — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 20:27:04 -0000

I don't think, that all spam is bad. Internet scam and fraud is much worse...

Re: Twitter Spam Spirals Out of Control

m0nk3y — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 20:23:08 -0000

Twam?

Re: Twitter Spam Spirals Out of Control

Todd Mintz — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 20:16:58 -0000

I think that spammers will realize that their ROI on Twitter is pretty minimal and go back to their more traditional spamming methods (email, guestbooks, blog comments).

Re: Twitter Spam Spirals Out of Control

Dallas Clark — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 20:10:32 -0000

I think report spam would be the best option!

Re: Twitter Spam Spirals Out of Control

scrawledinwax — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 19:34:59 -0000

http://www.alleyinsider.com...

Twitter's email notification system was down - and thus you got them all at once. Other points still totally valid though.

Re: Twitter Spam Spirals Out of Control

Steven Smyth — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 19:00:26 -0000

I like the idea of a "Report SPAM" button. Obviously, Twitter should be left as open as possible. I do have the option of not re-following anyone I deem as annoying, but the community should decide if a person gets banned or not.

Re: Twitter Spam Spirals Out of Control

Nick Schmidt — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 17:50:46 -0000

Interesting. I haven't seen any spam yet.. I hope not too..

Another place that is getting a lot of spam now is facebook. I get weird messages from models and etc. I hope its not going to turn into like myspace.com.

@Astarwithin. Good point. Thanks for the conversation.

@everyone else.. I never heard of CAPTCHA. Help me out...

Re: Twitter Spam Spirals Out of Control

Astarwithin — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 17:15:13 -0000

Convo I had w/ a very smart friend of mine. :)

[15:48] @fizzboy on twitter: I read the article
[15:48] @astar_alone (me) on twitter: I do think they should do a captcha
[15:48] A: I don't want bots in my flist even if it makes me look popular
[15:49] F: captchas keep the [visually impaired] from being able to use the web
[15:50] A: I think you can have them read aloud to you
[15:50] F: and using the "block" link gets rid of unwanted followers
[15:50] A: I'm blocking but it's still a pita to have to go through the whole list and take out people
[15:51] F: i think you're worrying too much about them
[15:51] A: I've got three [women of questionable moral fiber] on my flist right now that added yesterday
[15:51] A: I don't want to have to go investigate every person who gets on my flist to see if they're legit or not
[15:52] F: captchas can be easily evaded by spammers; they simply pay for humans to solve them farm the work out to overseas
[15:52] A: ugh
[15:52] F: yeah
[15:52] F: again, i wouldn't worry about them, what does it matter who follows you
[15:53] F: it's like complaining that someone friended you on LJ or something like that
[15:53] F: since reciprocity is required to spam, it's pointless
[15:54] F: that's what's made twitter so spam resistant
[15:55] F: if anything, twitter should probably make the e-mail notifications off by default and have a Report Spammer link or something, make it work like gmail's spam filter
[15:55] A: ah
[15:55] A: see, that would be good
[15:56] F: if enough people mark a person as a spammer, then the person gets removed from everyone's list
[15:56] F: that's why gmail is so spam free
[15:57] F: spam twitterers are much easier to identify than spam messages, so it'd be even easier to make it work that way.

Re: Twitter Spam Spirals Out of Control

Pratik Patel — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 17:13:43 -0000

So long as the CAPCHA is accessible, I could love it. I don't want to have to fight another battle. Ev has done a fantastic job of making Twitter accessible; let's not ruin it.

Re: Twitter Spam Spirals Out of Control

Honoo Flammen — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 17:07:17 -0000

Instead of a CAPTCHA, how about a "Report Spam" link next to people on your followers list. If enough people mark an account as a spammer, it gets removed from everyone's followers list.

That, along with either disabling or a staggered delayed new-follower notification would curb the "unwanted followers" thing.

Perhaps also have a soft limit on the number of follows that a person can make in a span of time. Most people build a list of follows over time and not all at once, I'd suspect. Spammers will try to follow everyone at once.

Re: Twitter Spam Spirals Out of Control

sarah stewart — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 16:44:31 -0000

Hi there, I am fairly new to Twitter so got very excited last night to see I had a number of followers. Fame, at last, I thought. I'll be getting invitations to be a key note speaker next! So you can imagine my disappointment when I saw that many were spam. My question on behalf of newbie twitter users is: how do I recognise spam apart from the obvious accounts belonging to hot, Russion women seeking a caring husband? cheers Sarah

Re: Twitter Spam Spirals Out of Control

blueflame — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 16:36:29 -0000

Twitter has the option allow only people who want to follow you... maybe it's something like creating a pool of people waiting to be approved. So, sending out a condensed, "digest." of your requests with a snapshot of follower/followee ratio could be helpful?

Anyway, I've been in various discussions trying to figure out what to call it. I first called it Spam + Twitter = "Spit" and the person doing is called a Spitter. Someone else came up with, "spwit" thoughts?
http://www.chrispalle.com/2...

Re: Twitter Spam Spirals Out of Control

MkChronos — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 16:35:49 -0000

I'm not sure how big of a problem it can really become. The beauty of Twitter is that I have to choose to follow people, and if it gets too "noisy", I can just stop.

Take for example the recent notice of the Twitter account that was for sale on E-Bay. How good will it really be at the first sign of spamming? A simple no follow and you're off (as well as block).

But I must say I do like the idea of the CAPTCHA for a follow, that might prove a useful impedance instead of a bot just choosing follows all day. Has the request already been put in to the developers?

Re: Twitter Spam Spirals Out of Control

Ben Kessler — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 16:23:30 -0000

I don't really consider getting a mass amount of followers spam. Why? Because I'm not following them, and I can't see what they are spewing out. I choose only to follow friends, colleagues and those who I am interested in seeing what they are up to.

Either way, adding a required CAPTCHA for every time you follow someone seems like it wouldn't be too mind boggling to implement and I don't think I would mind it so much.

Re: Twitter Spam Spirals Out of Control

Peder Hanson — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 16:23:27 -0000

another possibility is to separate personal from commercial accounts. then let users choose if they want to let businesses follow them.

Re: Twitter Spam Spirals Out of Control

Mark Evans — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 16:23:03 -0000

You know that you've really made it when the spammers start paying attention. :) This looks like an opportunity for an enterprising entrepreneur, although the Web being what it is, few people would actually want to pay for an anti-spam tool.