There doesn’t appear to have been an official announcement, but Twitter has begun soliciting spam reports to a “spam” user account via direct messages.
Are you a victim of Twitter spam? Just begin following @spam and send it a direct message with the username of your spammer. As the following email autoresponse to spam reporters instructs, you can send these direct messages from your mobile phone or opt for a public tweet as well:
Howdy!
Thanks for reporting spam- we’re working really hard on getting rid of it! Did you know: you can now easily report spam directly from your Twitter account? Visit:
http://twitter.com/spam
and follow the account. You can then send:
* a direct message to @spam: @moneybagsnow is a spammer!
* a direct message from your phone using d+ username + message: d spam @carmoney, @cashnow is spam!
* a reply to @spam like so: @spam this is a spam account: @bigmoney5and we’ll take care of it. You can send as many spam user names as will fit in one direct message or @reply as long as they are designated like this: @crystal.
Note: it’s better to send a direct message over an @reply. Direct messaging keeps @replies reporting spam out of your followers’ time lines. Sending direct messages also keeps the spam account’s user name out of all search results. Because the message is private, you prevent them from benefitting from publicity. Thanks again for helping us track down spammers!
Twitter Support Team
So far 213 members have begun following @spam, which oddly has decided to follow 179 members itself. It will have to gain a much larger following to make a dent in Twitter’s spam problem. The Twitter Blacklist, a website that tracked all banned Twitter accounts before its owner lost faith in the service, lists 561 blacklisted users as of July 12th.
Read more about Twitter’s spam efforts here.
[Thanks for the tip, Rafa]
@spam follows you back in order to receive the DM. If @spam doesn’t follow you, it wouldn’t be able to receive DM.
I think…
twitter is tied!
It’s a nice activity!
Yeah the main reason why spam follows you back is so you can send it DMs…
Nice feature though. I get spam accounts following me all of the time.
I wonder how many people are going to be reporting Scoble’s posts.
i hate spams. but its already part of the web can i say it culture. hehehe
How will ppl send a DM to this id – “spam” – unless and until it follows all users? (Weird design logic by twitter abt DM’s but what to do)… and in this case, it is the id Spam that needs to follow twitter users and NOT the other way around at all.
Don’t you just stop following the user who is sending you spam?
It’s about time this finally happened. I didn’t think Twitter would do this, though, especially after reading an article from someone who was harassed on Twitter for weeks, formally complained to the people at Twitter, and had Twitter pussyfoot a response saying that they couldn’t do anything.
Fucking tattle- tales don’t know how to ‘unfollow’ or ‘block’? Ridiculous.
“mom, jeffrey’s spamming me”
I’m snitching on Twitter…lol
Should Twitter be using the Hormel SPAM product image in conjunction with their @spam account? From their “Spam and the Internet” page (http://www.spam...com/legal/spam/):
“…we do object to the use of the word “spam” as a trademark and to the use of our product image in association with that term”
Hendrickson:
Do you live above Mike Arrington’s soon-to-be repossessed Garage?
Might be time to get into another profession, you fraud.
Good to know! Thank you
The followers of the “spam” account ballooned to ~1300. It’s an uphill battle but looks some information about the tools available could help a bit.
nda
black canada car deliver pets red tom apple white ocean
What in the world does that message mean?????????????????
There are many forms of spam, today my message was “RT” with changing SEO in “sex” and at the end it was attached a hashtag with the same word…. When I took a look in his profile, all messages sent by him was “RT`s” with the same changes the word “sex” interleaved in all those messages….
Hm, it`s a form of spam to obtain results in search engines for the keyword desired; but with many unpleasant results for the owner of the clean website/blog who sent the original message… he can obtain a decreasing of results in the search engines…
There are many ways that Twitter Spam happens, one of the most common ones is in the form of Twitter direct messages (DMs) with offers about “making money with Google” or “make $500 a day online”.
Take 3 Steps to Get Rid of this kind of Twitter Spam
http://bit.ly/1LWjGa