We’ve been covering mostly Follow Spam on this blog but there is another variety of spam on Twitter that is even worse because it shows up in your Twitter stream (versus your email inbox). It’s Track Spam. Chris Kelley does a great job of describing it…
I think the spammers may be one step ahead yet again. The emergence of features like track and various twitter search engines mean that twitter user can and do see tweets from people they don’t follow. If a spammer picks the right keywords to include in their update, they can spam all of the users following or searching for that term. And while most viewers of the spam will realize what it is and discount it, some won’t and will click through…which is exactly the same calculus the spammers rely on for email spam.
- Chris Kelley, Twitter Spam (04/16/08)
This is the technique that @mytweets was using last week. Notice the use of a hash tag on this tweet. Anybody who was tracking the #Edmonton hash tag got hit with that spam message, which included a useless link to a personal injury lawyer site that had absolutely nothing to do with #Edmonton. There were many, many complaints about @mytweets to the point where Twitter founder Ev Williams got involved. As of the writing of this blog post @mytweets has been quiet for 4 days. Will they strike again?
