By
Rob Waugh
12:26 EST, 6 April 2012
|
12:28 EST, 6 April 2012
Twitter has finally taken action against the spammers and porn sites which clog up people’s follower lists and news feeds.
The company filed a lawsuit on Thursday in a U.S. court against five websites that it accuses of creating tools for spamming.
Many users complain that the site is ‘wide open’ to ‘spambots’ which bombard users with links that lead to dubious web sites.
Many users complain that the site is ‘wide open’ to ‘spambots’ which bombard users with links that lead to dubious web sites
The social media firm battles a wave of automated tweets barraging real users with anything from Viagra ads to virus-ridden links.
Often billed as a service to help a Twitter account gain followers, websites can take control of an account, known as a bot, that follows or sends automated tweets at real users in the hope that some will follow the bot back or click through links the bot has sent out.
‘As our engineers continue to combat spammers with strong safeguards and technical efforts, today we’re adding another weapon to our arsenal: the law,’ Twitter said in a blog post.
Twitter now claims 140 million active users.
As its user base has grown, so have bots and spam, emerging as a problem that Twitter fears could dilute the online conversation and irk bona fide users.
Both Facebook and Google have taken spammers to court in recent years with success.
The defendants listed in the suit filed in the U.S. Federal Court in San Franciso are TweetAttacks, TweetAdder, TweetBuddy, James Lucero of justinlover.info and Garland E Harris of troption.com.
The site has now begun to target the spammers that clog up its news feeds
‘We’ve focused on tool providers; They have willfully created tools that enable others to propagate spam on Twitter,’ Twitter said.
‘With this suit, we’re going straight to the source. By shutting down tool providers, we will prevent other spammers from having these services at their disposal.
Further, we hope the suit acts as a deterrent to other spammers, demonstrating the strength of our commitment to keep them off Twitter.’
In its blog post, Twitter noted its recent acquisition of Dasient, a web security company that Twitter says represents a part of its ‘larger investment in security and fraud protection.’
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If you cut out the rubbish, there would not be much left.
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Sick to death of Twitter.
Its full of “Help me get 1000 followers” or “Dear Famous person please retweet this as me/someone i know/someone i’ve met/has/had/cancer/accident/nose bleed blah blah blah…
Just as bad as Facebook now.
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