There's no spam on TwitterHi, clinfoot. [redacted] ([redacted]) is now following your updates on Twitter. Check out [redacted]'s profile here: http://twitter.com/[redacted] You may follow [redacted] as well by clicking on the "follow" button. Best, Twitter
For the third time in two days *, Twitter notifies me that some other user with a generic sounding name is following me and, when I look at that user's profile, I see:
That Following number, 18,576, is increasing by the minute. It was 17,998 when I first looked and now stands at 19,661.
And the tweets?
Every one of them contains a URL like http://tinyurl.com/whatever and every one of those redirects at least twice, once from tinyurl and at least once more after that, and lands at a page loaded with links to dodgy content and paid advertisements.
Looks like spam to me, or should we call it twam?
And yes, I know I can block these or at least choose not to follow them, but that does not make them anything but spam.
* I have lost count of the total number of these I have seen, but the rate at which they are cropping up is accelerating.
Category: Misc
Technorati: Twitter
1. Ulrich Krause24/04/2008 09:40:31
Homepage: http://www.eknori.de
It took only 1 1/2 day for the first SPAMMER to follow me on Twitter. Then there were three on day 2. On day 3 I deleted my Twitter account ...
I'm happy with my mail ans sametime. No need for tweets ...
2. Steve Castledine24/04/2008 10:34:42
Homepage: http://www.stevecastledine.com
At least this spam is by default "Opt Out" in that you have to specifically start following them to receive it. Like you pointed out with the number of people they follow they are easy to spot and so can be blocked or just do nothing - doesn't give you spam per se.
3. Ben Rose24/04/2008 11:14:44
Homepage: http://www.jaffacake.net
I've got some similar followers, but all of them lack motive so far...e.g. there are no links on their tweets.
Either way, if I don't know them I ignore them...more than half of my followers are unknown so far.
4. Richard Schwartz24/04/2008 15:42:10
Homepage: http://www.poweroftheschwartz.com
Did you expect anything different? There is no open communication technology that won't be hijacked for commercial purposes, and the "dodgy content" leads the way. I'm quite sure that the day after Gutenberg printed his Bible, the porn industry adopted the technology to issue the first copy of "Nuns Gone Wild", complete with advertisements for herbal supplements that promised monks an improved religious experience, nudge nudge, wink wink.
5. Chris Linfoot24/04/2008 15:58:21
@Rich - I expected nothing different.
Others, it seems, did.
6. Alan Lepofsky24/04/2008 16:38:24
Homepage: http://www.alanlepofsky.net
See here
http://www.alanlepofsky.net/alepofsky/alanblog.nsf/dx/great-now-there-is-twitter-spam and similarly here
http://www.alanlepofsky.net/alepofsky/alanblog.nsf/dx/youtube-spam
Nothing is sacred from these @sses.
7. Volker Weber24/04/2008 23:09:15
Homepage: http://vowe.net/about
Chris, switch off notifications of new followers. Instead, check this page once in a while: http://twitter.com/replies Twitter remains completely spam-free for me.
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