How spamming works on Twitter

by Volker Weber

hereishowtospamontwitter

Twitter used to be spam free. You chose who to follow. You were not getting any spam at all. Until somebody found a way to make your friends spam you. Promise them something for free, if they distribute the message.

Now you just need to look at your twitter stream to find out which of your friends will sell out for free stuff.

Comments

No need to look in your Twitter stream. I bought Macheist 3 and spammed my friends for free software.

Bruce Elgort, 2009-04-05

I'm guilty too. Ashes on my forehead.

Stephan H. Wissel, 2009-04-06

One man's spam is another man's steak. I was thrilled when I found out about Macheist via Twiter. I bought it, and several others have bought it based on my post about it. (you are given a referer count) I'm happy. They are happy. The software vendors in the bundle are happy. The charities that are getting money from the bundle are happy. Wins all around I'd say.

Alan lepofsky, 2009-04-06

I been involved/interested in anti-spam for many years. Not high profile, and not very active the last few years, but I been participating in a couple of newsgroup, and even wrote a spam filter for Notes 5. At Lotusphere one year (when Notes 6 beta 1 was just released), I talked to one of the Iris/Lotus guys about adding DNS blocklists to the mail gateway to filter incoming spam. In Beta 3 that was implemented. :-)

Personally I refuse to buy any product advertised by spam. This is known as the Boulder Pledge:

"Under no circumstances will I ever purchase anything offered to me as the result of an unsolicited e-mail message. Nor will I forward chain letters, petitions, mass mailings, or virus warnings to large numbers of others. This is my contribution to the survival of the online community."

I know it may be an utopian idea, but if nobody bought anything from spammers, they would not make money, and they would lose the financial incentive to spam. But since spam is so cheap, it is enough that one out of 10,000 or even one out of a million buys something, and the spammer make a profit.

It does not matter how good the product is, if it is for charity, if it is a "good thing". If it is advertized by spam, it is evil and you should not buy it.

As Spamhaus.org puts it:

"Spam is an issue about consent, not content. Whether the UBE message is an advert, a scam, porn, a begging letter or an offer of a free lunch, the content is irrelevant - if the message was sent unsolicited and in bulk then the message is spam."

Karl-Henry Martinsson, 2009-04-06

I used a second Twitter acount with only one follower (my primary account) for this questionable promotion. Normally I use this (protected) second account to tweet status updates from my Twitter-capable home appliances.

Henning Stoerk, 2009-04-06

Well, mainstream, trolls and spam floods the social media, not only Twitter. This is the end I suppose.

Cem Basman, 2009-04-06

Twitter-capable home appliances.
Wow!

Frank Quednau, 2009-04-06

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