Twitter Takes on Spam

So how many followers do you have on Twitter? If you are like most users, you probably have a few followers you wish you could get rid of: spammers. As Twitter’s popularity has grown, so has the sophistication of spammers. And, with that sophistication comes a whole new way for evildoers to phish for your Twitter account information or get you to click on a link to drive up their site’s traffic.

Twitter is taking the threat seriously. According to an AdAge article, the “trust and safety” unit (a name that only an Internet company could dream up) is now the largest department in the company with 22 employees (out of 140). The trust and safety department’s efforts appear to be working. Again according to AdAge‘s interview with Twitter executives, 10 percent of all tweets were spam in August 2009. As of February 2010, spam had reduced to 1 percent of all tweets.

Just what qualifies as Twitter spam? Certainly Twitter’s version of phishing is considered spam. This occurs when someone sends out a message that entices you to go to a mock-twitter page, where you enter your account information, giving the spammer access to your account – and the ability to send out spam from your account.

Another popular technique is to use technology to follow thousands of users in an attempt to get follow-backs. Many people have auto-replies set up to automatically follow anyone who follows them. If this is the case, then a Twitter spammer can get on your follow list and start sending messages. These messages may drive you to a specific website for an offer, may just be phishing or may be used to drive traffic statistics. Setting up auto-replies to send out messages when you tweet something using a specific keyword is also considered spam.

In a detail that seems too good to be true, the 28-year old woman heading up trust and safety for Twitter is a former spokesperson for Perverted Justice, the group that helped NBC put on the show “To Catch a Predator.” To learn a lot more about Twitter’s spam policies, check out its Policy Forums.

You can read more about Twitter’s efforts in AdAge.