Stop Twitter Spam

This has been an especially spammy week on Twitter.  Just ask the people at TwitSpam.org, who have been working hard to compile lists of spammers so that you can preemptively block them.  These spam attacks seem to come in waves and they always result in people venting their frustration in their tweets.  Tonight, Twitter co-founder Ev Williams responded directly to some of these complaints.

This isn’t the first time that Ev has responded to spam concerns.

Twitter has started to clearly mark spam accounts with this text: This account has been flagged as SPAM and has been frozen. It also looks like they’re removing the avatar (often semi-pornographic) and deleting the tweet history & Profile URL from these accounts so that the spammers can’t gain any Google juice from their frozen account. This will minimize some of the confusion that was occurring when you clicked the Profile URL from a New Follower email only to find that the account doesn’t exist because Twitter had already removed the spammy account.

Update:
So far, response to this latest tactic seems to be positive…

Update #2:
There is a similar message appearing for Suspended accounts…

The Suspended Accounts link is a Help page that describes why an account might be considered spammy. It also states that the account can be suspended because of Terms of Service violations. It’s not really clear to me yet what the difference is between an account that has been Frozen due to spam and an account that has been Suspended due to spammy behavior and/or TOS violations. Update: It appears that Twitter has changed their terminology in the last couple of days. They are no longer calling these accounts Frozen.

Here is the complete text of the Suspended Accounts help page:

A Twitter account may be suspended for a variety of reasons. The most common of which is automated mass following or other types of spammy behavior.

What is Spam on Twitter?
Commercial or promotional use of Twitter is allowed. There are many companies who create valuable, opt-in relationships with users on Twitter who want to keep up to date with them. However, if you are following other accounts in order to gain attention to your account or links therein, you may be considered spam. If you are creating a series of accounts in order to promote the same thing, you may be considered spam. If you are sending large numbers of @reply messages that are not genuine replies, you may be considered spam. If you are creating updates in order to show up in search results, you may be considered spam. If you are disguising links (i.e., writing about one thing but linking to another), you may be considered spam. If a large number of users have blocked you (relative to those following you), you may be considered spam.

Other Reasons Your Account May Be Suspended
It’s possible your account may be suspended for breaking other Twitter rules. Impersonation, illegal content, or any violation of the Twitter Terms of Service may result in the suspension of your account.

If You’ve Been Suspended Unjustly
Please let us know if you feel your account was suspended and you believe it should not be. We will review your request as soon as possible.

Update #3:
Biz Stone provides further explanation of the new Suspended accounts on the Twitter blog. He also provides some details on their anti-spam tactics: a new administration tool that makes it much easier for Twitter employees to identify and suspend spammy accounts and a full-time Spam Marshal starting next week. Here are some reactions to the news:

• sitepoint: Twitter Gets Serious About Spam
• profy: Twitter Refines The War On Spam
• VentureBeat: Twitter begins bringing down the spam hammer

Some good advice for new Twitter users from Shel Israel:

Avoid Spammer stats. The worst thing you can do is have stats that show you follow 149 people and 4 people follow you. You may be the nicest person in the world, but you have spammer stats. It’s because you chose to follow a bunch of people but revealed so little of yourself, that no one wanted to follow you back. This is fixed by going slower, by posting tweets that let others know about you.

- Global Neighborhoods: 7 Tips for New Twitter Users

Sean Percival continues the Less is More theme when he tells Topic5.com that they’re “doing it wrong”.

J.P. DeFellippo > Why Twitter spam won’t stop any time soon

A good description of why Twitter is such an attractive target for spammers. There is some good discussion in the comments, including a response from Twitter co-founder Ev Williams.

It’s amazing how quickly bad information travels on the internet. Yesterday there was a very big misconception about Twitter’s new follow limits spreading around the blogosphere. Here’s the chain of events:

• Brent Csutoras wrote a blog post called Twitter Limits Following to 2,000. He came to this conclusion based on his personal experience with follow limits. He also has a friend who had a similar experience with a limit at 2,000. So far this is accurate, although someone skimming the headline might come to the conclusion that Twitter has imposed a hard limit at following 2,000 which is not the case (Twitter says that the limit is not the same for everyone and it will change based on behaviors).
• The news about a follow limit of 2,000 picked up steam with this blog post by David Risley: Twitter Marketers and Gaming The System, which linked to Brent’s post. Like Brent’s blog post, there were no major inaccuracies here but David’s choice of words on his link – ‘Twitter now has a 2,000 follower limit‘ could easily be misconstrued by someone who scanned the link and didn’t click through for the details. Remember, Brent had a problem with following more than 2,000 people, not with having 2,000 followers. More on that later in this blog post.
• Later in the day, Dave Winer wrote a post called Twitter limiting followers to 2000. From Dave’s blog post: “Just read in various places that people are getting messages from Twitter saying that there’s a limit of 2000 followers per account.” His sources were Brent and David’s post and a discussion on FriendFeed started by Louis Gray. This is where the major inaccuracy really started, although it’s easy to see how Dave came to this conclusion if he keyed in on David’s choice of words when he linked to Brent’s post. I still love ya Dave.
• Om Malik used Dave Winer’s inaccurate post as the source for his post on GigaOm: Twitter Limits Followers to 2000? This headline was later changed to the current headline: ‘Ev Williams: Twitter Not Limiting Followers’
• By now, all of this has gotten on to TechMeme. So it must be true, right?
• Robert Scoble started this discussion on FriendFeed: “I’m seeing that Twitter is limiting people to 2,000 followers. That sucks. I tried to get you all over to scalable FriendFeed.” There are dozens and dozens of comments on this thread, with the usual declarations that these limits signal the downfall of Twitter.

Shortly after Om’s post, Twitter co-founder Ev Williams went into damage-control mode. He sent out a tweet telling Om that his information was wrong and left this comment on Om’s blog post.

Om, I’m afraid this has gotten confused. There is no limit to the number of followers you can have.

There is a limit to the number of people you can *follow*. This is mostly to reduce spam and depends on a number of factors. More details here: (link)

As I mentioned, earlier Om later updated the his blog post to reflect Ev’s clarification.

Biz Stone has also tweeted about the inaccuracy:

folks, you can have as many followers as you want—there is no limit on your Twitter popularity potential

As of the writing of this blog post (9:40 am PST on August 12th), Dave Winer has not corrected his blog post yet. Hopefully he will update it soon. Already there are thousands of people who got the wrong information from three A-List bloggers and I highly doubt that those people have seen the corrections from Ev and Biz. I have a feeling that Twitter will be fighting this rumor for weeks. Don’t believe me? Just do a search on 2000 follower limit and look at how many people consider this to be a fact.

And all of this points to a need for Twitter to improve their communications about these follow limits. Right now they are sending very mixed signals. Are the limits there to control spam or help with system performance. If the limits are dynamic then why are so many people hitting the limit at 2,000? And why do the limits exclude some people – e.g. Leo Laporte’s TwitLive account?

Update:
Dave Winer has written a new post acknowledging the error in his original post.  David Risley has also written a follow-up post making it clear that the limit is on following, not followers.

Digg.com founder Kevin Rose knows a thing or two about scaling a web site and dealing with people who are trying to spam / game a web site. Today he gave a thumbs-up to Twitter’s new follow limits. Bonus points for including the symbol for infinity in his tweet.

Aside from a recent post on the Twitter blog that didn’t include much detail, there hasn’t been any significant changes in Twitter’s controversial new following limits. While Twitter has stated on multiple occasions that the limits are different for everyone, many people are coming to the conclusion that new users can’t follow more than 2,000 people. And it’s very unclear now why these limits are in place. Are these limits in place to discourage spammers or are they there to minimize problems with system performance? Or both? If the limits are there to discourage spammers then why are so many non-spammers being impacted? The visibility of this issue has gone up a notch today with this discussion on FriendFeed and speculation that the follow limit might lead to a business model for Twitter.

Update:

It’s interesting how speculation about a following limit of 2,000 is quickly interpreted as fact in the blogosphere.   Here’s a new thread on FriendFeed started by Robert Scoble: “I’m seeing that Twitter is limiting people to 2,000 followers. That sucks. I tried to get you all over to scalable FriendFeed.“  It looks like Ev Williams is denying that there is a hard limit at 2,000.  His tweet is in response to a recent post by Om Malik.

…what I find particularly interesting is that the company promises it will be watching for malicious Twitter profiles looking to infect your computer. It looks to me that we will soon be offered new anti-virus software releases that protect not only our emails and web surfing but Twitter desktop clients as well. It will be interesting to watch another industry profiting off Twitter while it still seems to have no idea how to monetize their own service.

- Profy.com, Twitter Gets More Malicious Ways to Hurt You – Watch Out for Rabbits

I never check the new follower notification e-mails with any urgency now as I know it’s just a spambot. Very boring.

- @purplelime

Kaspersky Lab has identified a Twitter profile that was set up to distribute malware. There is quite a bit of coverage of this story on TechMeme today. It appears that Twitter is moving very quickly to remove these accounts as they are identified.

Update (8/6/08):

Biz Stone from Twitter posted this on the Twitter blog yesterday:

Malicious Software or “Malware” is rampant on the web. Some experts have estimated 1 in 10 web pages contain malicious code that could infect a user’s PC. While Twitter can’t actually host malware, it does allow hyperlinks and is therefore not immune to those who would attempt to point others directly towards malware elsewhere on the web.

We’ve already removed the Twitter accounts being discussed today in news articles and blogs and we’ll continue along these lines. However, the news is a good reminder. Ne’er-do-wells prefer the web for spreading computer viruses and the like. If you happen across a web page—including a Twitter profile page—and you have reservations about what lies on the other end of a hyperlink, think before you click. Especially if the page seems a little sketchy to begin with.

Also: If you think you’ve found someone linking to malware on Twitter, please let us know.