Hello,
I'm Mervi Eskelinen!
An artist, nerd and sorcerer, dedicated to make world softer and better for everyone, and to get you to make more art. Make art, change the world!
Twitter Tuesday: How to identify a spammer
In time to time my Twitter followings list gets reduced by one. When I do a little digging around I notice a person who had been big with sharing tons of links, ReTweeting way too often, @mentioning mindlessly for no good reason and abusing hashtags has been suspended for suspicious behavior. Well, no wonder. They weren't really a spammer, but I can see why someone might misread them as one.
There's a crazy amount of spammers online these days. Or at least that's how it seems. Blogs are drowning into comment spam and looks like every other new Twitter follower is following for other reasons than being interested of you.
The question here is how to know a real spammer from an overly enthusiastic Twitter user (and how not to show off as a spammer yourself). There are a couple of signs that will reveal a spammer. The following doesn't provide a bulletproof way, but gives hints of how to tell a spammer from a regular Twitter user and how not to appear as a spammer yourself.
A profile picture tells a story
The profile pictures give a first hint. Spammers usually are eggheads (eg. don't have a custom profile picture or they use pictures of hot babes (eg. sexy half-naked or naked girls).
Of course it's not that easy though. New users often lack of a profile picture and thus are eggheads. Sometimes Twitter gets broken and doesn't show the profile pictures, especially when someone has uploaded a new one. And there's always a chance the hot babe is really a real hot babe. So don't be too quick to judge.
Weird way to say stuff
Spambots are rather badly done. Usually, not always. Usually they aren't very good with writing real sentences.
The easiest way to know a spammer is to look closely what they write. If their sentences make no sense and if they are filled with typos and grammar errors, there's a chance the person is not a person at all, but a bot trying to speak human.
Sure, some people are pretty typoriffic, making (grammatical) mistakes is human and not everyone is fluent in whatever language they are trying to Tweet with. And some people just love to bend the languages and their rules. Therefore bad language isn't a sure way to know a spammer from a person.
Links, links, links!
Spammers are flooding you with links. Of course! Their sole reason of existence is to get you click their links.
Often the links are quite harmless. You'll get to a site that tries to sell you something. But most likely the links will cause you real trouble. Exploiting Twitter vulnerabilities the spammer may hijack your account or at least the site may send your computer to the virus hell.
The links usually follow a call of action, a quick sentence that tells you to do something NOW. Or it says something shocking enough to get your attention.
By the way: You may get a Direct Message from someone you follow saying (something like): "This person is talking bad about you. Click the link!" Don't click it. It will make you send the same message to your followers as well. Instead make sure the person you follow knows their account has been compromised and ask them to change their password immediately.
Tweeting the same thing over and over again
Spammers tend to Tweet the same thing repeatedly. Usually it's an @mention following a call of action and a link. But it could be also something without the @mention.
The thing is that spammers tend to be kind of dumb (or bots) and they don't have a very wide vocabulary. Therefore they use the same sentence to lure people to their linky traps.
If repeatedly and continuously Tweeting something is part of your Twitter marketing plan, drop it now. You really really don't want to look like a spammer, do you?
Too fast to reply
Have you noticed how sometimes when you Tweet about a certain subject you'll get immediate @reply with a link from a complete stranger? These subjects are usually health/sex/food related or have something to do with a celebrity.
Some automated accounts search for certain hashtags or other words in Tweets and reply to them with their spam links. The point is simple: To look like they are responding to your Tweet with information you might find beneficial (since you are obviously interested about this subject) and to lure you to click a harmful link.
Too many hashtags
Spammers try and take advantage of popular hashtags. They implement hashtags to their Tweets to get noticed by those who happen to follow these tags.
Using too many and perhaps non-related hashtags in one Tweet is to be seen as a warning: This person is trying to gain attention with bad intentions.
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