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Twitter Gets Spammed

Posted in how NOT to WOM. on Tuesday, May 12th, 2009 by Andrew
May 12

As Twitter rapidly grows, people are making more concentrated efforts to take advantage of its traffic. In some cases, this means spamming it by creating a “trending topic.” According to Mashable, these trending topics are fairly easy to create, and once you start a trend it shows up on every Twitter homepage.

A recent trend today is “#twitterpornnames” or “Twitter Porn Names” which is a silly game where you find out what your porn star name is by combining your mothers maiden name with the street you grew up on. According to PC World, this might actually have been an attempt to gain sensitive information from Twitter users. After all, what are the questions you usually need to answer when you forget your password?

A further problem is that instead of creating some trending topics, spammers can also just include the trending topics in their tweets, and it’s like free advertising. Anybody that clicks the trending topic will see their marketing message.

If Twitter can help filter out the spam, then legitamite topics will more easily rise in popularity, making it a more honest and representative tool. This is our shout out to twitter, hoping that the problem gets fixed. (ps – also a large thanks to Mashable for keeping us posted about these updates) 

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Jason Moreau

Andrew, Thanks for the heads up regarding this type of attempt to harvest sensitive personal info. I have shared this with others in my office.

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  1. Robert Andrew Salon says:
    May 12, 2009 at 2:38 pm

    Twitter Spammers make money off your clicks and phish for your information: http://bit.ly/oFVnC
    plz RT

  2. Chicken FTW says:
    May 12, 2009 at 2:38 pm

    Twitter Spammers make money off your clicks and phish for your information: http://bit.ly/oFVnC
    plz RT

  3. The Cyphers Agency says:
    May 12, 2009 at 2:38 pm

    Twitter Spammers make money off your clicks and phish for your information: http://bit.ly/oFVnC
    plz RT

  4. Strayer University says:
    May 12, 2009 at 2:38 pm

    Twitter Spammers make money off your clicks and phish for your information: http://www.tcapushnpull.com/2009/05/twitter-gets-spammed/ plz RT

  5. Andrew Krebs-Smith says:
    May 12, 2009 at 10:38 am

    Twitter Spammers make money off your clicks and phish for your information: http://bit.ly/oFVnC
    plz RT

  6. Robert Andrew Salon says:
    May 12, 2009 at 10:38 am

    Twitter Spammers make money off your clicks and phish for your information: http://bit.ly/oFVnC
    plz RT

  7. F Hawaiian Shirt Day says:
    May 12, 2009 at 10:38 am

    Twitter Spammers make money off your clicks and phish for your information: http://www.tcapushnpull.com/2009/05/twitter-gets-spammed/ plz RT

  8. Patrice Rice says:
    May 12, 2009 at 10:38 am

    Twitter Spammers make money off your clicks and phish for your information: http://www.tcapushnpull.com/2009/05/twitter-gets-spammed/ plz RT

  9. JoannaSchaff says:
    May 12, 2009 at 10:40 am

    RT @ChickenFTW Twitter Spammers make money off your clicks and phish for your information: http://bit.ly/oFVnC plz RT

  10. FreeBeing says:
    May 12, 2009 at 10:41 am

    RT @AndrewKS Twitter Spammers make money off your clicks and phish for your information: http://bit.ly/oFVnC plz RT

  11. Tyler LeCompte says:
    May 12, 2009 at 10:44 am

    RT @AndrewKS: Twitter Spammers make money off your clicks and phish for your information: http://bit.ly/oFVnC plz RT

  12. Rich says:
    May 12, 2009 at 10:49 am

    RT @ChickenFTW: Twitter Spammers make money off your clicks and phish for your information: http://bit.ly/oFVnC plz RT

  13. Rich says:
    May 12, 2009 at 10:49 am

    RT @ChickenFTW: Twitter Spammers make money off your clicks and phish for your information: http://bit.ly/oFVnC plz RT

  14. Darren Easton says:
    May 12, 2009 at 2:09 pm

    Retweeting @adsatTCA: Twitter Spammers make money off your clicks and phish for your information: http://bit.ly/oFVnC plz RT

  15. Christina Drews says:
    May 13, 2009 at 1:14 am

    RT Twitter Gets Spammed http://tinyurl.com/oqjovk

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