Stop Twitter Spam

Damon Cortesi (@dacort, creator of TweetStats) has a great post today about statistical analysis of a Twitter Spammer. This is a must-read for anyone who is concerned about the rise of spam on Twitter.  We’ve been looking at a lot of spammer profiles over the past few weeks, and Mr. Cortesi is absolutely correct - these profiles often have a very similar statstical “signature” in terms of their Following:Follower ratio, whether or not their updates include links back to their profile URL, etc.  And he’s even looking at the percentage of Followers who followed via an auto-follow, which is a subject that we just posted about.

Furnishing an easy means by which to report/block spam is also a necessary evil. Twitter has hummed along relatively under the spam radar until now, but it seems it has to accept that spammers will try to take advantage of its users. Giving users the power to identify and avoid spam through the use of statistics will hopefully make Twitter a fruitless source of successful spam.

- Damon Cortesi: Addressing Twitter Spam Through Statistical Analysis (04/16/08)