Twitter Spammers – The Long and the Short.ly of It

You might think that the only way you can be duped on Twitter is by agreeing to follow those unsavory types who stalk your Twitter account. Nope, not by a long shot.

Those fake followers are almost more of a nuisance than anything, taking up your time as you evaluate whether they’re worth it.

Diving Off the Diving Board

While those idiots and swindlers are doing their best to ruin your Twitter experience, perhaps the bigger threat to you and your computer comes in the form of those shortened URL’s.

Think about it. Does it really make sense that the bad guys know how to send spam on email but don’t know how to send it out on Twitter? In fact, the URL shortening company Bit.ly flags 2 to 3 million untrustworthy messages of its own per week!

Clicking on one of these shortened links is like diving into a swimming pool without checking first to see if it has any water.

The Future Looks Dim

Twitter says that it’s going to start testing those shortened URL’s to make sure they are safe. If they do as good a job at that as they do at getting rid of pornographers, swindlers and multi-level marketers, things sure don’t look good for the home team.

Sure, there are technical additions available that offer some extent of protection. Firefox and other browsers offer add-on’s and plug-in’s that will give you a preview of the longer links. However, those don’t assure the link is not malicious.

One of the best overviews of this topic is from Brian Krebs’ Security Fix blog in the Washington Post, “Spammers, Virus Writers Abusing URL Shortening Services.”

What it comes down to is this – Twitter has the potential to be a true national resource, acting as an ingenious social meeting place and an invaluable public square.

But, the assault on it by the by the online version of drug dealers, pimps and criminals is simply not being taken seriously enough. Right now, as I write this, you can follow the carnage by doing your own search for “twitter spam” on search.twitter.com.

With Friends Like That

But, hang on to your hats, folks, because that’s not the worst of it. It’s actually your friends you need to watch out for on Twitter – not just the spammers and the URL sleaze balls.

More about that in our next post.