Twitter's Growing Pain: Spam

[Peaches]

Twitter's growing pain: spam

Jan 26, 2009 "Twitter is having growing pains that include spam posts and spam accounts. One Twitter account was recently suspended after a blog post which included a video by Graham Cluley, a Senior Technology Consultant at Sophos, about a "very suspicious" user by the name of "Sara Cross", aka Sara4877 who Cluley believed to be a spammer.

In the video Cluley shows viewers how to spot a potential Twitter spammer that may be following you. If the user who's following you has a new account, normally indicated by no posts, or at least very few and only seems to follow people with the same word in their name (i.e. the same surname, etc.) then the account is likely to be a spam account.

Cluley's Sophos blog has been updated with the news that the Sara4877 account has now been suspended. The suspended account page links to Twitter's help and support resources about account suspension. The page explains the criteria for Twitter freezing an account, ranging from user name squatting, to spamming."

Heise security for more details: http://www.heise-online.co.uk/security/Twi...m--/news/112492