talkingDigital

We are sure that someone has written about this new approach spammers are using on Twitter, but we haven’t seen anything about it.

Twitter spam needs a name so we are going to call it spatter (get it spam+Twitter – not that clever, but at least it’s something).

Twitter filters out spammers by measuring blocked users and also users who post a lot but have few followers. To get around this, spammers are setting up new accounts and posting content that is not spam.

The first hundred or so messages are about food, movies, humorous comments, etc. We assume that they are using content from other Twitterers to create these posts.

Once they have a few posts established, they start following people. Especially those who automatically follow back. Many users do a quick check to see if the user is posting real content or just spatter. Typically users don’t read many of the posts, they check to make sure that all of the posts aren’t made up of sales pitches.

Once the spammer has build up enough of a following, then they unleash their spatter. Typically stuff about how to work from home, porn, or other typical spam material.

To some, a follower is a follower, but eventually this could cause a problem for Twitter as bad guys setup automated systems to let spatter loose throughout the network. This could be one reason that Twitter objects so much to programs that automatically return follows. The more followers a spammer has, the more difficult it will be to distinguish them from legitimate Twitter users.