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May 7, 2008

Twitter Starts Blacklisting Spammers

Erick Schonfeld

78 comments »

You know you’ve made it as a communications medium when you start attracting spammers. On Twitter, the problem is getting bad enough that the service is starting to blacklist people who spam other members. There is already an unofficial site called The Twitter Blacklist that lists 329 known spammers on the service (see screen shot below). That has nothing to do with Twitter officially and is just a public service.

But Twitter also has its own official blacklist. It is not clear how you get on it, but perhaps if you are blocked by enough members you get inducted. Jesse Stay explains:

Before today, Twitter would mark accounts as “spam”, but not tell the owners of the accounts they marked them as spam. Those owners of the accounts could follow others, but no one was able to follow them, and there was no way for the owners of those accounts to know they had been blacklisted.

But now Twitter is simply suspending the accounts of people it considers spammers, but it will notify them. According to a discussion on the Twitter Development mailing list:

We’ve been considering this issue here at Twitter HQ, and we’re planning on simply removing the accounts of users who have violated our Terms of Service, as opposed to freezing their account as we’ve done in the past.

I just hope Scoble isn’t on that list. Taking away his Twitter would devastate him, especially after the whole Facebook banning incident.

twitter-blacklist-small.png

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 at 12:01 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Comments

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  1. Robin Wauters

    May 7th, 2008 at 12:04 pm

    Yay!

  2. Matt

    May 7th, 2008 at 12:10 pm

    good to hear

  3. Daniel Thomaser

    May 7th, 2008 at 12:12 pm

    Hmm. We could block Scoble, just to check your theory…
    Maybe he will be thankful for the massive amount of free time ;o)

  4. Ara Pehlivanian

    May 7th, 2008 at 12:13 pm

    Final-freakin’-ly! Twitter Blacklist FTW!

  5. bob cobb

    May 7th, 2008 at 12:16 pm

    Obviously not a full list, scoble isn’t even on there.

  6. Michael Lambie

    May 7th, 2008 at 12:16 pm

    oh sweet poetic justice. Although, twitter is great that you can’t get spam really unless your following someone, except for @messages i suppose.

    great work Twitter!

  7. Daynah

    May 7th, 2008 at 12:24 pm

    Nice, thanks for the post! Supposedly “BritneySpears” is following me…

  8. SimonSays

    May 7th, 2008 at 12:26 pm

    NO MORE SCOBLE?? SWEET!

  9. J Lane

    May 7th, 2008 at 12:27 pm

    Thank god (or cheesus)

  10. Nishu

    May 7th, 2008 at 12:27 pm

    Nice step .. would reduce the load on the servers i suppose.

  11. AMYalcin

    May 7th, 2008 at 12:27 pm

    Wow! Great post, thanks!

  12. daniel versola

    May 7th, 2008 at 12:27 pm

    I think that’s great. its bad enough we get spam via email, telephone, sms, the last place we want it is on twitter and other social networks.

    go twitter!

    @danielvrsola / cto / currie computers, inc.

  13. GeekMommy

    May 7th, 2008 at 12:28 pm

    Yeah, the brouhaha over the NoahDavidSimon and his 21 troll aliases kind of pushed them into forming some sort of policy.

    Notable that all of the accounts were deleted as of today.

    Is @panopticons abusing the Terms of Service:
    http://preview.tinyurl.com/562ty5

    What’s Twitter’s Stance Toward Abuse?
    http://preview.tinyurl.com/3zdmj5

    Apparently, this is the end of the world as we know it and we should all alert our Congress-critters if one is to believe @prokofy in the above Twitter Help threads.

  14. ceejayoz

    May 7th, 2008 at 12:28 pm

    @6 - actually, the biggest spam method on Twitter is people who follow 10,000+ random strangers. You get an e-mail when someone follows you, so people click-through…

    With this, they’ll be blocked quickly.

    Wish Twitter would institute a maximum-follows-per-day limit or something, though.

  15. Stop Twitter Spam

    May 7th, 2008 at 12:29 pm

    About a month ago Twitter added a way to do a ’spam request’ on this Help page: http://help.twitter.com. From that page, click on ‘Submit a Request’ and then select ’spam request’ from the drop-down box. Twitter reviews the account and then decides whether or not they should take action against the account. From what I can tell, the actions can vary. For example, on one account that I reported, they removed it from the public timeline and removed their follow/unfollow privileges but the account was not terminated. FYI - from my experience it takes Twitter a couple of weeks to review the account and take action, so don’t expect any immediate results.

  16. Sean

    May 7th, 2008 at 12:29 pm

    “I just hope Scoble isn’t on that list.”

    I dunno Erick - have you ever followed Scoble on Twitter? I couldn’t handle it.

  17. Logical Extremes

    May 7th, 2008 at 12:34 pm

    I hope Twitter has a better algorithm than twitterblacklist.com. The ratio is not really important, it’s the content and behavior. After all, @scoble says being a follower is more important than being followed. If you don’t want to follow someone, don’t click through the email, it’s that simple. Then block only those who are abusing the service.

  18. Smitty

    May 7th, 2008 at 12:37 pm

    Wouldn’t it make more sense to not tell them, and just have their messages go into some null box? That way, they think they’re sending out all this junk and don’t know no one’s getting it. If they are told, they’ll just make another free account, but stop short of getting it blacklisted, knowing they will get a message if they send too much.

  19. EH

    May 7th, 2008 at 12:39 pm

    Ha ha, can you imagine? What would Scoble do if there was no outlet for his word salad?

  20. Tim G

    May 7th, 2008 at 12:40 pm

    Now if TechCrunch would just blacklist twitter spam.

  21. Jim

    May 7th, 2008 at 12:46 pm

    Scariest part is about evasdropping and corporation stalking project… Did you know some blogging groups, major publications, companies, and corporations blacklist Techcrunch?

    This is why I get spam email after login on Techcrunch.

  22. Kathy

    May 7th, 2008 at 12:47 pm

    <>

    Define “abusing the service”

    (1) Reportedly, one mommy blogger (and former journo) was blocked by Michael because she teased him about getting scooped — in an @ comment.
    (2) I’m pretty sure I’ve been blocked by a high profile Twit because I challenged an opinion, using an @ comment. I don’t remember “un-following” but those tweets don’t show up anymore.

    In neither case would a normal person call either of these @ comments “abuse” — they were one-of’s AND not personal attacks.

  23. markzero

    May 7th, 2008 at 12:50 pm

    in re: #14, quite a few of the linkfarming follower types seem to have “squidoo” website addresses in their bios. So now I block anyone with them as an address, just to save time.

    BTW, Scobleizer isn’t a spammer. He’s just chatty. Don’t like it? Don’t follow.
    Calacanis and Pirillo are other people who send a lot of updates, too, but for some reason Scoble gets yelled at.
    Of the three, at least Scoble usually responds to readers who write him :)

  24. unitechy

    May 7th, 2008 at 12:50 pm

    thats real good to hear

  25. lux

    May 7th, 2008 at 12:54 pm

    One thing I have noticed is that either Twitter is flaking on sending new follow messages, or some clever black-hats have figured out how to use the API to do follows without triggering a notification email.

    The structure of Twitter still prevents you from being subjected to unwanted DMs, but it does not protect against unwanted @ replies (which, depending on your settings, can trigger additional SMS costs). So yes, some sort of formal policy against spam was necessary.

  26. Sol

    May 7th, 2008 at 12:57 pm

  27. BannerBoy

    May 7th, 2008 at 1:00 pm

    I’m surprised it took them this long. Spammers usually latch on to something like that pretty quick.

    Now, does anyone want to hear about my system where you can work-at-home selling v1@gr@ and make a six-figure income in your spare time? :-)

  28. Jesse Stay

    May 7th, 2008 at 1:05 pm

    I need to see if I can get a list of those I detected as being “blacklisted” by Twitter from my socialtoo.com script. I can give you a pretty good list from that of exactly who Twitter is blocking (and probably now has suspended their accounts). Stay tuned to http://staynalive.com and I’ll post a follow-up with more details as I find them (hopefully tonight).

  29. markzero

    May 7th, 2008 at 1:06 pm

    #25 (lux) I noticed that, too. It’s possible they just don’t send updates immediately. What I do to check who’s followed me recently is to go to
    http://dossy.org/twitter/karma/ and then look up only followers. My pool is still small enough that I can figure out who’s new from that.

  30. Alex

    May 7th, 2008 at 1:06 pm

    Doesn’t the basic functionality of twitter have an anti-spamming feature built into it? Why do we need to have “blacklists”. If you think someone is spamming, and you don’t want to see their updates, don’t follow them. It’s that simple. This would eliminate all the gray area of whether something is to be considered spam or not, and therefore worthy of a blacklisting.

    This is a social service people, let the community decide on their own! :)

  31. Jesse Stay

    May 7th, 2008 at 1:11 pm

    Alex, the problem from before was that spammers could still follow you, even though there was no possible way for you to follow them (since Twitter had “blacklisted” them). These guys were getting away with harvesting links and info without your permission. Now at least we know Twitter is taking a proactive stance to remove them entirely.

  32. lawrence

    May 7th, 2008 at 1:16 pm

    EVERYbody is a ’spammer’, more or less to some degree than others.

  33. markzero

    May 7th, 2008 at 1:22 pm

    Alex, they’re potentially a drag on the system. They’re just there to linkfarm. If I load up something like tweetwheel, and it hits some loser following 26,000 people, that’s going to seriously degrade the speed of the tool. Multiply that by the 2-3 dozen spammers I’ve blocked in the last couple of weeks (and I’m virtually unknown, relatively), and you begin to see it ruins things for everyone. What do you want to bet some of the service failures we’ve had are because of extra demand due to these?

    They’re parasites trying to get money for nothing, at the expense of the commons. Barnacles on ships reduce their efficiency; it’s called biofouling (look it up sometime). I can’t think of a catchy name for what these people do, but it aggregates to denial of service for the rest of us.

  34. Chris

    May 7th, 2008 at 1:24 pm

    The whole point of twitter for companies like TechCrunch is TO spam people. That’s why you have a FOLLOW button and a REMOVE button. You control the spam. Works like MAGIC.

  35. Alex

    May 7th, 2008 at 1:25 pm

    @ 31

    Jesse, that makes sense, people using twitter as a convenient tool to steal content. I didn’t think of it like that initially.

  36. Alex

    May 7th, 2008 at 1:29 pm

    BTW, i find it ironic that i found out about this post because i am following tech crunch on twitter… :x

  37. markzero

    May 7th, 2008 at 1:30 pm

    While I was posting that, socialm______ and mrachi_______ followed me. Blocked. :)

  38. Erick

    May 7th, 2008 at 1:34 pm

    Finally, we can rid the world of spammers… YES!

    and visit http://www.topdouchebag.com while you are at it! Thanks1

  39. sondrasondra

    May 7th, 2008 at 1:41 pm

    Hutch Carpenter’s got it. Just read Trackback #2 above.

  40. Alexandar Tzanov

    May 7th, 2008 at 1:43 pm

    Yeah, they need to delete all accounts associated with this email - pleasantcreature@gmail.com. They all have one post - “contact me at pleasantcreature@gmail.com“. That person is a squatter.

  41. kg

    May 7th, 2008 at 1:55 pm

    What is the probability that there will be atleast one post about twitter in a day ? You put too many post about twitter. It’s like techcrunch is the twitter for twitter app updates :-)

  42. Dayngr

    May 7th, 2008 at 2:07 pm

    You can thank me later. *wink*

  43. Michelle Anderson

    May 7th, 2008 at 2:32 pm

    Your post headline is misleading. Twitter is not blacklisting tweeters…yet. The Web site you refer to assumes that spammers follow tons of people and have a small number of followers. The ratio used is causing some tweeters to be flagged as spam by Google unfairly. One example is twitter.com/FlypeClub, an experiment of sorts run by a real human. Because of the ratio, its been indexed as spam. What is being called “spam” on twitter isn’t truly spam… tweets from people you don’t follow aren’t in your time line. It’s your CHOICE to click through to the url listed in their profile. More disturbing to me is that someone has inequivalent decided what twitter spam is (the ratio) without thought of the consequences or a way for people to object to being flagged.

  44. Drew

    May 7th, 2008 at 2:48 pm

    Arrington is paid to cover twitter. I mean seriously who gives a fuck about this twitter spam EVERY SINGLE DAY.

    I’m going to go read duncan riley’s “offering” instead where its not a twitter or gtfo circle jerk.

  45. Jesse Stay

    May 7th, 2008 at 3:22 pm

    Michelle, I didn’t say anything about the Twitter ratio in my post. I agree with you - the ratio should not be what they base it off of. Twitter is an individual experience and it should be the individuals that determine who is a spammer and who is not.

  46. Mike D.

    May 7th, 2008 at 3:34 pm

    Michelle (#43), if you re-read the post and follow the link to Jesse Stay’s post you’ll see that Twitter is indeed terminating accounts that violate the TOS. They (Twitter) are getting spam reports from people every data and they’re also looking at accounts that have a high degree of block activity. All of that is completely separate from the Twitter Blacklist, although I suspect that there is a lot of overlap between the accounts that Twitter is acting on and the ones that are showing up on Twitter Blacklist.

  47. Michelle Anderson

    May 7th, 2008 at 3:52 pm

    Jesse Stay, Mike D: I appreciate the correction. I can go blind with angst when I see how easy it is for a person unleash an algorithm based their idea of what spam is. Of course, ultimately this makes me just as bad as the site I’m complaining about, hm? Thanks for listening to me rant. =)

  48. Trisha

    May 7th, 2008 at 4:20 pm

    A few good ideas in the comments, but there’s a problem with a twitter follow limit.

    I evaluate every person that follows me, and if they’re human and cool, I follow them back. Sometimes it could take a couple weeks for me to get to it, which means I may add a hundred or so people on one day.

    If I’m limited to say 20 follows a day, that’s going to really make me get backlogged - even worse than I am now (currently have 103 follow notifies that I haven’t checked yet).

    And the gents talking about the overload have a great point. All in all, the twitter spammers have to be deleted, but in some way that they can’t come back or becomes a total waste of time.

    Honestly, I thought the posting void was genius. It doesn’t add any load to the servers. They might also consider a follow void - where they can’t follow anyone, but they think they’re following people because they just get fed the public timeline.

    Their follow number would get incremented when they add someone, but they won’t actually be following that person in reality. It’s like a twitter sandbox.

    Outright deleting their accounts won’t work. It saves them too much time.

  49. Joel Strellner

    May 7th, 2008 at 4:43 pm

    This kind of messes with tools like twitturly that are actively trying to block spam that goes through the tools, On twitturly we now go through every single tweet that a user makes and decide if the user is a spammer or not. If they are we don’t count their vote on whatever URL they just posted to twitter, and if they are not we count them.

    The issue is that if they are deleting the accounts, then when we go and try to analyze the new account, we won’t have much to go off of and it makes it much harder to determine if it is a spam message or not. Dropping the account into a void was a much better solution.

  50. Bam Azizi

    May 7th, 2008 at 7:54 pm

    I GOT BLACK-LISTED

    i was just trying to catch Scoble in number of friends and i get black listed.

    this is so unfair, the system is sooooo flawed. i never spammed anybody, it didn’t even occur to me to spam and yet these REAL IDIOTS are calling me a “stupid spanner”!!!

  51. JC

    May 7th, 2008 at 8:57 pm

    Well done Twitter!

  52. Rushabh Choksi

    May 8th, 2008 at 2:14 am

    I guess their should be an entire list. Besides that if it could have a search option through which one can find out which twitter users are blacklisted it would make it a killer tool. As it it will help us to know more about the person who sends us a request to follow. What do you think Erick?

  53. Rupesh

    May 8th, 2008 at 2:29 am

    Erick,
    I found that http://twitter.com/Saawariya has also been blacklisted. But, in the official Twitter blog they have mentioned that they started India short code after noticing Saawariya twitting..- http://blog.twitter.com/search?q=5566511
    So, how authentic is the list?

  54. Owen Byrne

    May 8th, 2008 at 5:13 am

    It would be really nice if they did something about the “I’m streaming live, come chat” epidemic, like blocking qik’s status messages. Then even Scoble’s feed would be endurable.

  55. Hauser

    May 8th, 2008 at 7:38 am

    You call “Twitter Blacklist” a public service? Please give me a break. They themselves state that they a banning “spammers and obnoxious people” and apparently they are judge and jury for determining what is an obnoxious person. They are behaving exactly like the jackbooted thugs that “run” things over at Wikipedia. More Web 2.0 not-so-benevolent dictators who will impose their skewed values on the rest of us. No thanks. Let people act like adults and block who they want. We don’t need these hyperactive do-gooders determining who is not acting appropriately.

  56. Jay

    May 8th, 2008 at 1:19 pm

    So, if enough people complain about you, then you could potentially get banned? What if a whole group of people decide that they just don’t like you and report you, then you would get banned because of a BS cult that has something against you?!

    Jay

  57. leo

    May 8th, 2008 at 2:29 pm

    They are not the only ones there are several other social networking sites doing the same thing like plime and digg.

  58. Zoobie Joy

    May 8th, 2008 at 3:32 pm

    Oh my! I just hope my account is not include in the black list..^^ anyways this is a good post! thanks a lot for the information..^^

  59. Winston

    May 9th, 2008 at 9:32 pm

    Why dont you use http://www.shopandsave.com
    Free to use.

    My account was balcklisted so decided to go ehre.

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