May 04 2008

Don’t Get Tricked by Twitter Spammers

Jianjun
Published by Jianjun at 5:33 pm under Web 2.0,twitter

[Bloglines] [del.icio.us] [Digg] [Facebook] [Furl] [Google] [Ma.gnolia] [MySpace] [Newsvine] [Reddit] [Sphere] [StumbleUpon] [Technorati]

Twitter faces serious Spamming problems recently. Spammers use bots to mass follow normal users. Although Twitter seems to have a mechanism to prevent these guys being noticed by users they follow, from their profiles we see they DO get followers. If they follow 10,000 people, usually they have a few hundred following back.

Today I found a new trick used by these followers. This guy created two profiles, one is used to mass follow other users, the other is used to ‘reap’ followers. See the following screen shots:

Spammer Profile 1 (If you are on Twitter, block this profile immediately)

Spammer Profile 2 (If you are on Twitter, block this profile immediately)

The first profile claims to be a service of Twitter called “Twitter Private Messaging Service.” When you click on the URL on this profile page, which is: twitter.com/friendships/create/InTouch, you will automatically follow the second profile. That’s why you see the second profile has 1,024 followers!

I think Twitter’s /friendshps/create/username function is actually a security loophole. I can’t really figure out why this function is there.

If you are on Twitter, watch out for this kind of trick. Spammers get enough followers to send spam or even do eviler things. Impersonation is a violation of Twitter TOS, but we see it’s prevalent on Twitterland. Failure to enforce the TOS gives green light to spammers. Twitter has to do something now before things become out of control and lose its user base!

Subscribe, Digg or Furl it...
SubscribeBlinklistBloglinesBlogmarksDiggdel.icio.usFacebookFurlMa.gnoliaNewsVineRedditStumbleUponTechnorati

4 responses so far

4 Responses to “Don’t Get Tricked by Twitter Spammers”

  1. # Nadineon 04 May 2008 at 9:21 pm

    Hi Jianjun,

    Just went by your advice and blocked a bunch of people. I have noticed that some strange characters have started following me. But how can I tell that they are not real people?

    Reply

    Jianjun reply on May 4th, 2008 9:38 pm:

    Nadine,

    Those are real people using Twitter mass-follow scripts available on the Internet to add hundreds of thousands of users indiscriminately.

    I still offer some of them the benefit of the doubt. But not for others who use strange/no photos, weird names, etc., I guess we have to trust our own instinct on this and at best refuse to follow back.

    For the particular case in my post, their profiles tried to fake official Twitter DM service and they use the Twitter security loophole to reap followers. Potentially this could endanger people’s private information and is probably already a criminal act in some countries.

    Reply

  2. # Cindy Kingon 12 May 2008 at 2:33 pm

    I also have a few followers that are following 30,000 people and could not figure out why. Thanks for telling me.

    Reply

    Jianjun reply on May 12th, 2008 3:56 pm:

    Hi Cindy,

    Thanks for dropping by. ;)

    Reply

Trackback URI | Comments RSS

Leave a Reply