Fight against spam on Twitter (TinyURL.Com/TwSpam)
.
This is my personal advice for how one can join the effort to fight against spam on Twitter. Please tweet me to let me know about any mistakes you think I may have made in this page, or to suggest better ideas.
.
If you see somebody tweeting what looks like spam, such as to one of the trending topics, or atsign some make-money-fast scam to your personal Twitter account, check that person's Twitter timeline to see what they are tweeting most of the time. If you see [almost] exactly the same text for most or all of their last 20 tweets, they are definitely spamming, and you need to:
  1. See whether somebody has already reported that account to @spam, by using the following efficient means: Go to Advanced Twitter Search, put the spammer's Twitter ID (or several spammer's Twitter IDs separated by spaces) into the spot for "Any of these words", and put spam into the spot for "Referencing this person", then click submit button called "Search".
    If you can't use Advanced Twitter Search because you don't have JavaScript, then log in at mobile.twitter.com, go to the end of your default after-login page where there's a simple search form, and put an atsign followed by username of spammer and then @spam.
    If you don't see that the spammer has already been reported, then please file a report yourself, as follows: Create a tweet starting with @spam then listing all the spammer's IDs, with atsign before each ID.
    Note: When you searched using advanced search form, no atsigns, but when reporting, atsign each ID to make it easy for others to just click on the @ID to see the spammer's timeline, or "suspended for suspicious activity" instead after a few hours.
    Even better: Reply to one of the actual spams, which will automatically put @oneOfTheIDs into the tweet text, then add any other known IDs for the same spammer, then @spam at the end, so the @spam staff will be able to just click on the "in reply to" link to see one of the spam immediately, useful if the spammer followed the spam with 20 normal tweets to try to hide the spams by getting them off the top page.
  2. Regardless of whether you saw somebody already filed a report, or you filed the first report, now immediately block+report that spammer, using the BLOCK button on the Web page showing that user's timeline.
  3. Most spammers use multiple accounts. To find them, use the Advanced Twitter Search form again, this time simply searching for some exact phrase, or combination of keywords, that is repeated in each spam. For example of current (Feb.23) active spamming, see: free iPad
    Look at the timeline of each poster in search results to make sure that account is repeating the spam rather than just tweeting it once or twice by mistake. If such a search turns up any other accounts that are tweeting the same spam many times, then block+report them also.
Warning: Don't ever re-tweet or otherwise post a [mostly] full copy of spam, because then people using the search engine to find multiple accounts of one spammer may see your copy of the spam and think you are a spammer, especially if you've re-tweeted the URL to the phishing site. As a result, you might get reported to @spam and/or blocked. Also twitter staff using automated means to find copies of the spam might find you. Also you really really don't want to repeat the payload URL within spam!!
Don't do what these lusers did: GinaHerrera
See also:
And if you do make that mistake, please delete your reTweet-of-spam, if you can figure out any way to do it. Next, please ask each of the spam-reTweeters shown above to delete their spam-reTweets too. (And if they say they don't know how, ask them to ask me how. There's no excuse for re-tweeting the payload of spam and then not deleting it after getting a "heads up".) Next time I check those links again, I want each individual tweet-link shown above to return 404 Not Found, and I want the "see also" search to say that nothing matched the search request.
.
Nobody can send you a direct message (DM) unless you are already following them, so if you get DM spam all you need to do is stop following that person and the problem is solved. (If the DM-spam is egregious, you may wish to block+report them also.) And never follow somebody just because they say "I'm following you, please follow me back" or "I'm trying to get 3000 followers" etc. Only spammers do that to trick thousands of people into following them, so the spammer can covertly DM-spam each of them. Follow *only* people who really do seem to have something useful to tweet publicly, and only if you really want to have their timeline merged with yours, and only if you are pretty sure they won't DM-spam you, so you're willing to allow them to DM you and you trust their DM won't be offensive.
.
Update 2010.May.22: A new spammer with multiple accounts, who sent me @CalRobert spam which started getting me ticked off. I looked at the spammer's account and immediately saw that @BetaGescheit is spamming the same fraudulent make-money-fast scam via different URLs (CPCashVid3 CelPhoneCash) and in different words (Advertising as affiliate... Making Money goes MOBILE... Ads on Cellphones... Marvellous!... Make cash...) repeatedly each atsigned to several other innocent victims like myself.
Then I started checking whether the same spam-payload URLs or come-on texts were being posted from any other accounts. Yes indeed (CelPhoneCash CPCashVid1 CPCashVid2 CPCashVid3) and (...BIG and FAST ...on lightspeed Astonishing... ...allready here Chance 2010/... Make FAT cash... Making Money... Marvellous!...).
Specifically the following criminals are flooding Twitter with spam: BetaGescheit CashMatrix2009 ElCidGrande TweetsMarketers fastforfuture fayewinters30 triosol
and the following idiots are re-tweeting the spam: AstatusBeats== DrewMula EzihAlive= KadenaSimon PEACHSUNSHINE1 delapour dietshop=== itskittylove mdnicethaking22 saaze tharolla
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
One FOREX spammer has tens of accounts, usually the 4-6 most recent accounts actively spamming at any one time. As of 2010.Feb.16:
Active:
Suspended for suspicious activity: jessiaca[100|101|102|103|110|111] mariaza[40|41|42|43|50|51|53|110|111|112|113|114|115|116|117|118|122|123|124|125|126|127|128]
Actively spamming a while back, then stopped for unknown reason; not yet suspended: mariaza[1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|10|11|12|13|14|15|16|20]
.
See also: xi3 (skip to where it says "Updated almost every day", where it lists categories of spam and currently active spammers for each; Unfortunately it doesn't have actual links to the spammers' timelines, so you'll need to manually copy and paste to create the appropriate URL)
I'm thinking of automating the spam-complaint process somewhat, so that you just go to my Web site and enter the URL (or just the tweet-number) of one instance of the spam you saw, or enter the Twitter screen-name of the spammer, and the Web site would automatically investigate that spam run by tracking down all similar spam within the past 1.5 weeks (via the advanced search engine), build statistics of that spam run, and show you the statistics and a list of links to all the instances it found, then guide you towards filing an appropriate complaint to @spam, and/or tweeting a "word-to-the-wise" to each spam-retweeters.
.
All this would be within the NewEco.Portl1 framework, so that you receive credit for reporting new sources of spam I didn't already know about, and you spend that credit to hire my automatic investigator to "handhold" you through the process, and then you get some credit back after you've actually tweeted a spam complaint that was requested by this system, and you get lots of credit back if your spam complaint results in suspension of the spammer's account or deletion of a re-tweet of spam.
.
Credits here would be exchangeable with NewEco credits elsewhere, so for example if you make a net profit helping report spam then you could spend the funds for other NewEco services.
.
Is there any reader here who would like me to create that WebServerSide software for you-all to use to fight spam more effectively?
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.