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Twitter May Be Generating Spam Account Income

October 28, 2011 By Gail Gardner 28 Comments

Twitter spam
Click Image to Read Interesting Spam Stats

Have you noticed that brand new Twitter spammer accounts don’t show any tweets?

I’ve been noticing that in spam accounts for a while now because that seems curious to me.

Then I noticed that #dominicanproblems was trending – and not just in Dallas Ft. Worth – for the entire United States and large numbers of individual U.S. cities  too.

There were an unusually large number of spam tweets promoting Visa.

So I did these screen captures.  This post is long because of the images, but you can quickly scroll through them all.

These show just some of the locations where @Dominicanproblems was trending:

Screen capture Oct 25, 2011 Trends Dallas-Ft.Worth
Screen capture Oct 25, 2011 Trends Dallas-Ft.Worth
Screen Capture Twitter Trends Oct 25, 2011 United States
Screen Capture Twitter Trends Oct 25, 2011 United States

I decided to see where else #dominicanproblems was trending. While it isn’t trending in every U.S. city it IS trending in a lot of places where there would not be high populations of Dominicans.

Twitter Trends Atlanta Oct 25, 2011
Twitter Trends Atlanta Oct 25, 2011
Twitter Trends Baltimore Oct 25, 2011
Twitter Trends Baltimore 10/25/11
Twitter Trends Birmingham 10/25/11
Twitter Trends Birmingham 10/25/11
Twitter Trends Charlotte Oct 25, 2011
Twitter Trends Charlotte Oct 25, 2011
Twitter Trends Las Vegas 10/25/11
Twitter Trends Las Vegas 10/25/11
Twitter Trends Phoenix 10/25/11
Twitter Trends Phoenix 10/25/11
Twitter Trends Providence 10/25/11
Twitter Trends Providence 10/25/11

Doesn’t that seem like a strange topic to be trending in so many places where there are not very many Dominicans? Add to that this interesting finding:

WHY are there no tweets visible in spammer’s profiles?

In the screen capture below you can see the spam tweet for a VISA gift card in the left side but there are no tweets in the profile at all. When a profile is full of spam tweets going to the same URL or promoting a specific offer repeatedly, people like me report them for spam.

If you remove the tweets so we can’t decide whether they are spammers or not we won’t report them.

Does anyone believe that the spammers have
found a way to keep their tweets from showing
up on Twitter in their profiles?

Why is there no tweet visible in this spammer's profile?
Why is there no tweet visible in this spammer's profile?

I did a series of sequential screen captures so you can tell I took one Twitter user after another in order. I did not jump around or selectively pick out only what I wanted you to see.

This next screen capture shows that the next tweet done by a regular user shows that she has tweets in both the left side showing the Twitter stream AND in her Twitter profile shown on the right side.

Real Tweet in Thread Shows in ProfileHere is another example of a regular Twitter account – again showing tweets on both the left and the right:

 

 Real Tweets Showing in Twitter Stream AND in Profile Example 2
Real Tweets Showing in Twitter Stream AND in Profile Example 2

Here is another example of a spam account showing a tweet in the Twitter stream but none in the profile:

Spam Tweet in Thread; Shows 2 Tweets Sent but No Tweets in Profile
Spam Tweet in Thread; Shows 2 Tweets Sent but No Tweets in Profile

And another

 

Notice that regular Twitter users' tweets ARE in their profiles
Notice that regular Twitter users’ tweets ARE in their profiles

While I suppose it is possible that spammers have found a way to send tweets into Twitter streams that do not appear in their profiles, it is more likely that Twitter is doing this internally as a way to generate income.

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Gail Gardner

Small Business Marketing Strategist at GrowMap
Gail Gardner is the founder of GrowMap.com. She is a Small Business Marketing Strategist who mentors small businesses, bloggers, and freelancers. After 23 years in the field with IBM and 5.5 years managing AdWords accounts, her focus shifted to small business marketing strategy. GrowMap.com is listed by Cision as a Top 100 Site for Marketers and has received three Small Business Influencer Awards from Small Business Trends. Named by D&B a Top 50 SMB Influencer on Twitter, you can follow Gail @GrowMap and on LinkedIn.
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Filed Under: Twitter Tagged With: social media, spam, Twitter, twitter spam

Comments

  1. Sterling Automotive says

    March 22, 2012 at 1:15 am

    My twitter account has been hacked please help me. Thanks

    Reply
    • growmap says

      March 22, 2012 at 2:29 am

      Hello,

      That is a common problem. Try the tips in What to Do When Your Twitter Account Gets Hacked. That post explains that changing your password may not fix it – you may need to revoke access to Twitter apps. How is explained at that link.

      Reply
  2. shafira says

    January 16, 2012 at 8:40 am

    I can not access my twitter account,
    hopefully you can help…
    Thanks for your news..
    shafira would love you to read ..Menunggu Dalam DiamMy Profile

    Reply
    • growmap says

      March 22, 2012 at 2:32 am

      Hi Shafira,

      What happens when you try to log in?
      growmap would love you to read ..Blogger Relations: Find out How to Master Blogger Outreach from Darren Rowse in Future of PublishingMy Profile

      Reply
  3. alex says

    November 28, 2011 at 4:53 am

    nice post! i had no idea twitter is doing stuff like that.. i don’t really understand how can they permit a thing like that..
    @peter: i don’t see how twitter helps with SEO, maybe just for forcing google to index a page..

    Reply
  4. sam says

    November 26, 2011 at 6:55 am

    This is really shocking. How can be this happen? Is twitter actually operating such steps to generate income only? Unbelievable!

    Reply
  5. Rina As says

    November 2, 2011 at 3:17 am

    I have not visited my twitter account, so not many things I know about twitter
    Thanks for your news..
    Rina As would love you to read ..Cara Mencegah Blog dari Blacklist Google Akibat Terinfeksi MalwareMy Profile

    Reply
  6. Peter says

    November 1, 2011 at 10:16 pm

    They are also now using twitter for their backlinks and for SEO techniques. Will twitter help us from our needs of back links?For my experience, their are too many competition on social sites.

    Reply
  7. tom buck says

    November 1, 2011 at 2:12 pm

    hmm, good idea, worth investigating definitely.
    Is that possible Gail?

    Reply
  8. Annie says

    November 1, 2011 at 11:28 am

    Good research! I have noticed the blank spam accounts but didn’t think much of it. Could it be that tweets stay in the search stream after being deleted, so maybe the spammer is tweeting and deleting, and the tweets stay in the search stream but don’t show on the profile?

    Reply
  9. Linda Wise says

    November 1, 2011 at 12:52 am

    I’m really feeling a little off these days when it comes to Twitter, and now with this? I would love to cut Twitter off from my daily activities if it weren’t so useful, even with the amount of spam going in and out on the site. It is still one of the best sites to get traffic from. I do hope for the sake of all the loyal Twitter users that they can do something about this.

    Reply
  10. Jeanie says

    October 31, 2011 at 10:36 am

    All the screen-shots that you offered above are very useful for everyone who uses Twitter! To tell you the truth I use Twitter not so often, because of spam. There are too many spammers on it, and I’m afraid to damage somehow my computer.
    Thanks a lot for sharing all this information
    Jeanie would love you to read ..Free TV Channel Video Facebook TemplateMy Profile

    Reply
  11. Michael says

    October 31, 2011 at 7:39 am

    I have found recently that spammers are including two or three trending topics within their tweet in hope of being noticed!

    Reply
  12. kathy says

    October 31, 2011 at 4:11 am

    In my opinion twitter now is obsolete. I dont see any good reason to use twitter this days …

    Reply
  13. Maja says

    October 31, 2011 at 7:05 am

    Spammer are the hateful entities on the online world. We have never consider that they can do such a deep attack. Your research has benefited us.

    Reply
  14. JasminHoward says

    October 31, 2011 at 2:02 am

    You have done such a great job at this screen shots. And it is very frustrating how t his spammers work since it creates chaos to the community and it ruins people who does a clean living. But I just don’t understand why do they have to do this. Social media is a very cool place to promote but this compaines just have to work it out like human beings and not make it a wrong example for others to follow.

    Reply
  15. John says

    October 31, 2011 at 12:33 am

    Thank you very much for the great info. I personally hate spammer accounts in twitter because it bothers me the most since I always use twitter for my business. Anyway, thanks a lot for posting this article.

    Reply
  16. Nik says

    October 30, 2011 at 1:31 pm

    Hi Gail,

    I think some nifty hackers got around some of the security. Time will tell. Once twitter fixed the loophole rest assured people will start selling the hack as a plug-in. Probably telling everyone you can makes thousands doing nothing, they probably add 5 useless bonuses and price it down from $997 to $97 he he.

    If it is twitter themselves, wow, I would be shocked.
    Great find!
    Nik
    Nik would love you to read ..How To Become a Management ConsultantMy Profile

    Reply
  17. tom buck says

    October 30, 2011 at 8:44 am

    I wonder if spammers have developed scripts which can create tweets and include / inject id tags from real accounts so when they show up in the Twitter stream they look real but because they didn’t actually originate from an account they don’t show up in that account’s profile. Much like hyjacking SMTP servers to send spam email and have it look like it comes from a legal account.

    Reply
  18. Ileane says

    October 30, 2011 at 7:43 am

    Twitter and Facebook have a lot of work to do when it comes to combating these spammers and this is a great example. Honestly, I’ve never had much confidence or interest in Trending Topics on Twitter because a great majority of them are useless or unrelated to what I’m interested in finding on Twitter.

    The other day, there was a guest on my blog who introduced a new Twitter tool called Twimbow (see my CommentLuv link) that could help address this problem. You can filter out tweets with specific hashtags and coming from networks like Foursquare for example. You could use Twimbow to exclude any trending topic you find suspicious, and I think it’s one of the great features of this service.

    Thanks for the heads up on this Gail!
    Ileane would love you to read ..Five Ways Twimbow Helps You Improve Your Twitter ExperienceMy Profile

    Reply
  19. Charles says

    October 30, 2011 at 11:59 am

    Yeah the amount of “people” that follow me or reply to tweets that are spam is quite annoying. Once the way the spammers are doing things is stop they will only have a new way to get around the system. Endless cycle it seems.
    Charles would love you to read ..Pheasant Hunting – Cooking the BountyMy Profile

    Reply
  20. Saidul A Shaari says

    October 30, 2011 at 10:57 am

    Whoa… This is one extensive study you have here and the funny thing is I was wondering why some of my new Twitter followers have zero tweets! I
    think we have to watch this more closely now.

    Thanks for sharing this.

    Reply
  21. Robert Benwell says

    October 30, 2011 at 9:30 am

    I’m sure one of your links shows folks how to report SPAM, but it’s pretty simple (and this article has a lot of links). Just click on the suspected spammers username in your timeline (when using Twitter’s on the web program, it may look different via a third-party tool liek Tweetdeck or a mobile app). This brings up their account in the right column. If the account’s last three tweets look as suspicious as the one that made you think they were a spammer, then click the down arrow and select “report Username for spam” – it also blocks their account for you, so you don’t see their tweets anymore. This helps Twitter track these folks (or robot accounts as many of them are) and close them down faster.
    Robert Benwell would love you to read ..Robert Benwell BioMy Profile

    Reply
  22. Anthony says

    October 29, 2011 at 8:51 pm

    It’s even easier nowadays to SPAM Twitter, if you know how to interlink all your website/social networks. For example, WordPress now has countless plugins that are designed specifically to update Tweets real-time. Certainly a valuable resource, but very easy to use for SPAM purposes.

    Reply
  23. Brian D. Hawkins says

    October 29, 2011 at 1:31 pm

    I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s all types of hidden income generation streams that have yet to be discovered by most of the social sites. Nice find Gail, it’s certainly very suspicious.
    Brian D. Hawkins would love you to read ..Join Social Media Today | Quick Blogging Tip ThursdayMy Profile

    Reply
  24. Aarti says

    October 29, 2011 at 12:41 pm

    I agreed with you, Twitter is full of spammers and newbie online marketers really don’t know how to utilize twitter for marketing purpose. They just continuously tweet same tweet again and again. If you really want to utilize twitter for marketing purpose then you must find the right people who actually looking for your services or products only then you can get benefit.

    As far this spam is concerned, I think it’s a bug with one profile or may be twitter is just working with spammers. 😉 Twitter need to work out on such things really strongly to remove spam.

    Reply
  25. Cristian Balau says

    October 29, 2011 at 12:34 am

    I don’t like twitter and I used it only when its must. I don’t like the fact that some people actually use it as a Instant Messenger, its stupid to write stuff only in 150 characters. Anyways, I don’t twitter because of the spam, there is so much spam on twitter. Sometimes I can really make a difference between a normal human being and a spammer, in fact most real human behave like spammers also, people just link their websites continuously…

    Reply
  26. Greg says

    October 29, 2011 at 4:10 am

    I saw some sites that automatically send out some updates in different social networking sites. I’ m not yet sure of its proven success but looks like its pretty useless. Aside for the fact that these are just garbage all over the world wide web.
    Greg would love you to read ..TORO Power Clear 210 ES Electric Start Snowthrower ReviewMy Profile

    Reply

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