Commercial spamming comes to Twitter with TweetTornado
By Dave Parrack
Twitter continues to grow in both users and notoriety. But that means one thing: an increased chance of the site being targeted by spammers and the like. TweetTornado is there to fill that gap in the market.
Every new service or application that arrives on the Web goes through different stages on its way to the finished product. It starts out small, with few users, all of which are dedicated to the cause and insistent that the product is the next big thing. Then comes popularity (hopefully), and the masses gradually descend. This is good for business but the mainstream get bred and move on very quickly.
Once an app hits this stage, then along come the people ready to manipulate and fashion the app or service for their own ends. Twitter is finally picking up pace, and users along with it. But coming right behind are the spammers, phishers, and ne’er-do-wells which have the potential to ruin a site.
Last November, Twitter obtained its first PayPerPost clone. Be-A-Magpie relied on account holders willing to trade in their friends for the sake of a few pennies. Then just a few weeks ago, Twitter was hit by its first big phishing scam. Thousands were affected, with even the new breed of Twitter celebs among them.
And now comes the latest unified effort to ruin Twitter. TweetTornado is a commercial spamming tool discovered by ZDNet. This “fully automated advertising software for Twitter” does the whole process of joining and participating in Twitter for you. Which means malware authors, spammers, and those with a passion for wrecking Web sites can now do so without much effort at all.
TweetTornado allows the setting up of multiple Twitter accounts, the automated adding of followers, and even updates themselves all with the minimum of fuss. This is clearly bad for Twitter and the millions who now use the micro-blogging site on a daily basis. But as with every villain, it does have a weak spot.
You don’t need a valid email address to start a Twitter account. Yes, you’re asked to enter an email address when you join, but it isn’t used to validate your account. TweetTornado seizes on this fact to be an efficient and deadly piece of software. If Twitter were to require a valid email address then that would surely be a good start in curtailing this type of software.
You can of course make it more difficult for this type of venture to take off by using common sense on Twitter. Don’t add people who follow you before first checking them out. If they’ve updated three times but are following hundreds of people, the chances are they’re up to no good. And don’t blindly click on links from people you don’t know.
Twitter is a brilliant service that could be ruined unless all of us on there stay on our guards.
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February 7th, 2009
It amazes me that someone would be so brazen as to open market spam software like this and I think all Twitter users should start an @Twitter campaign to stop this garbage before it becomes a real problem. I have no idea why they don’t confirm emails before validating accounts but they need to start, NOW!
Anyone that invests in this expensive piece of trash deserves to lose their money when Twitter puts an end to it’s effectiveness and I hope lots of them prepaid for a year.