MoMusings

I’ve no idea how many of you out there in blog-land use Twitter, but I’d guess quite a few of you do?

As a relatively new Twitter user, I’ve not seen much of the problems that Twitter has experienced over the last year, including account hacking, phishing, 419 scams, worms and other malcode problems. One area that seems (at least to me) to have been rather quiet has been spam via Twitter.

Until the last week or so, I’ve never received any. I’d be interested to know how many of you out there in blog-land who use Twitter have seen similar things to what I’m about to discuss.

I don’t think there is a specific name for Twitter spam, so I’ve coined one; Twam.

I’m sure the more creative of you out there can come up with something better?

Let’s have a look at a couple of examples I’ve seen in the last week or so:

1. The Vote For Me Twam
I received the following notification and when I checked out the profile for that user all their tweets were requests to vote for them in some beauty pageant.

As you can see at the time I was sent this they had a fair few followers and were following (Twamming) lots of other Twitter users. when I checked this particular account again this morning, it was still active and still only begging for you to vote for her at 60P per text no less! The number of followers now stands at 343 and she is following (Twamming) 1,986 other Twitter users.

2. The Porn Advertising Twam
I received the following notification just this morning and when I checked out the profile for that user they only have one tweet with a link to a porn site! So.they seem to be using Twitter to advertise their porn site.

Shortly after receiving the above notification, I received another using the same name, but from a different Twitter account. Their feed was exactly the same as the first one I received just 30 minutes earlier.

When I just checked both of these accounts (before publishing this) that were advertising a porn website they have now been closed by Twitter.

Needless to say I have blocked these Twitter accounts, as I don’t want to see what they offer and I don’t want to give them any credibility by being seen as being followed by them.

I wonder if this is the start of a major spam (twam) attack on this social networking site? I wouldn’t be surprised as this fate has already befallen FaceBook, Myspace and many other similar sites.

For those of you who are interested in following me on Twitter (no not you spammers/twammers) you can easily find me via my name or my Twitter account which is talkytoaster.

If you spot anything interesting feel free to send me a Tweet or a Direct message.

Take care and happy Tweeting.

The 419 scammers have a decided to use Gala, a UK Bingo and on-line gaming company as their latest one to impersonate, they do this to try and get you to swallow their scam as real.

Here’s a couple of screen shots showing one copy of the emails I’ve seen so far today:

The use of a “trusted” brand name is to try and make it more believable, so that you will be willing to actually contact them to try and get the alleged winnings.

However, you’ll end up being put on a suckers list; receiving even more of these scams, even via the postal service and over the phone too. Not only that you will also be asked to pay some administrative or legal fees to release the money to you…there is no money, you haven’t won anything except the chance to be less gullible in the future.

If you want to find out more about these scams and how they work you can find other postings on the subject on this blog, and also on my published papers and articles page here: http://momusings/com/papers

If you get an email claiming that you’ve won something in a competition you never entered be very skeptical. If you want to know if it is real or not then please feel free to contact me.

Gala do appear to have a lottery game, but it is online at their website, they don’t do e-mail lottery at all….you have been warned