Spam News

TwitBlock joins fight against Twitter spam

Friday, August 21, 2009

The popularity of micro-blogging site Twitter has generated a growing number of phishing scams, spam and other threats from cybercriminals. A new service called TwitBlock is advertising itself as a way to screen out spam profiles from a user's list of followers.

TwitBlock provides ratings of profiles, with ratings above 20 representing the most likely spam accounts. So far, the rating system is labeling a lot of legitimate accounts as spam, which TwitBlock says will improve as it tweaks its methods.

"The data TwitBlock can gather while these junk accounts are active will be useful battling spam in future, wherever it shows up next," TwitBlock says on its website. "We hope to gain great insight into how spammers are using social networks, and rest assured that we will be sharing these insights."

Recently, web security researchers have noticed spam profiles on Twitter that use image spam, promoting an adult service with text embedded in the profile photo.

Cybercriminals who control networks of compromised PCs, called botnets, have been using Twitter accounts to send out links containing new commands or executables for the botnet.

As TwitBlock noted, "wherever the internet gives us a place to communicate and share, spam and crime will not be far behind."