Phishing spam on Twitter

Dear Twitter,

You have done an incredible job of responding to a massive influx of new users, especially over the last 8 months.  With growth reaching 1400% month over month, the need to react and support quickly has been critical, and for the most part I would say you have done so better than just about anybody else has that has seen such rapid growth on their platforms.   With the recent roll out of Twitter lists you have also added value to the community by providing a tool that people can use to pull some signal out of all of the noise.  Many are finding the lists as the place to discover and follow new people.  Thank you for all of your work.

A new phenomenon has bubbled up from the user community, and it’s something that I would like you to take quick and decisive action on.  Phishing scams have torn through Twitter on an almost daily basis for the last several weeks, with unsuspecting users clicking links and turning over their credentials.  The results have been painful to deal with…I’m receiving dozens, and sometimes hundreds,of direct messages from real people (not bots) every single day with messages like, “hey. do this iq quiz for me http://quiz6545.info” and “i found y0u http://videos.twitter.shjjiwe.com/?vpgdzxiaq”. This is phishing that is perpetuating too rapidly and it’s starting to ruin the communication platform for me. Here is what needs to happen to fix this…

Spam on Twitter has been on my mind a lot lately.  It could be the influx of unwanted replies that I talked about earlier, or the very positive actions by the Twitter team yesterday to purge known accounts, or the constant stream of “get more followers today” that I see. No matter, spam on Twitter is only going to get worse before it (hopefully) gets better.  Anywhere people gather electronically, unscrupulous marketers will find a way to put get rich schemes or magic blue pills that promise a lifetime of pleasure information in front of us against our will.  Spam isn’t just for email anymore.

We can work as a community to help slow its advance however, and I want to tell you the very simple way I do my part and ask you to do the same with just a couple of easy steps.

Public Unfollows: The New Twitter Spam

I’ve seen some interesting things pop up in my “mentions” on Twitter recently...public declarations of people that I stopped following or blocked.  Unlike Qwitter that sent you emails when somebody stopped following you (that is, when the service worked…which it stopped long ago as far as I know), and SocialToo emails you a daily list of those that no longer subscribe to your updates, this new public method seems to be picking up steam and bots like Follower Monitor are popping up everywhere.

Personally I don’t care.  The people that I unfollow or block are by and large spammers.  Usually the accounts that I part ways with are telling me how to “get 400 new followers on Twitter every day!” or “make money online with this sure-fire, turn key system!”.  Very rarely do I unfollow somebody because I don’t like what they are saying or doing, I’m pretty open to conversations that differ from my own views.

I’m not the only one noticing this, people like Jeremy Isaac see this too and call it like it is: spam.  It’s spam because it shows up in my replies stream because my name is mentioned, and it annoys me because it’s the result of somebody that I’ve blocked or unfollowed.  It kind of feels like they are saying to me, “oh yeah, you’re going to block me? Well then I’m going to show up in one last message of yours and there is nothing that I can do about it!”  I think there is something we can do about it, let me detail it for you.