Twitter Takes Spammers To Court In New Suit

By Gerry Shih

SAN FRANCISCO, April 5 (Reuters) - Twitter filed a lawsuit on Thursday in a U.S. court against five websites that it accuses of creating tools for spamming, as 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.

Litigation isn't a novel approach: 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 defendants could not immediately be reached for comment by Reuters.

"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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Comments

[jsgaetano]

10:14 PM on 04/07/2012

I've actually noticed a drop in Twitter spam.

[bsmith8874]

05:49 AM on 04/07/2012

I like spam. I cook it on the grill and serve it chopped up in salad. Its also good on crackers. It taste like a cheaper cut of ham. I am sad that people don't like spam, but that means more for me.

[rudy in la]

07:25 PM on 04/06/2012

Spam blocking is a huge cost to the us. Wastes a lot of resources. I hope security measures achieve a breakthrough in blocking or at least identifying the source of SPAM.

[jsgaetano]

10:16 PM on 04/07/2012

The sad thing is, this could have been easily stopped in the first place if they would have said laws created to stop fax spamming also applied to email. However, the Conservative Culture of Corruption was making huge money from spammers, so they pushed legislation and court rulings into pretending it was a "whole new field of law", despite the fact that it was still electronic communications and that unsolicited advertising costs were being pushed onto the people paying for the electronic service.

[edenooch]

03:43 PM on 04/06/2012

i only use twitter for sports, news and some stand up comedians i enjoy...... the bots, spammers and people with dumb tweets belong in the same network

[authorized-user]

03:39 PM on 04/06/2012

"We've focused on tool providers; They have willfully created tools that enable others to propagate spam on Twitter," Twitter said.

Can they be funded by crowd sourcing?

[Out to Lunch]

02:54 PM on 04/06/2012

Twitter 140 million users claim is most likely way off - more accurately they have 140 million active accounts. So many people have multiple accounts there and on Facebook.

[rkller900]

01:20 PM on 04/06/2012

Immagine finding a spammer in person and beating the living he,, out of them, just hope they dont wear a hoodie ,

[Chad McVeigh]

03:01 PM on 04/06/2012

Wait, what...?

[Bgrngod]

01:14 PM on 04/06/2012

But but.. the only time I ever get a mention is in spam. Now I'll just feel all lonely in the big Twitterverse. Boo hoo.

[grimcity]

02:01 PM on 04/06/2012

#FF Bgrngod !!! #showlove

[KrVar]

01:14 PM on 04/06/2012

We should take this to the next step and make it against the law to create viruses and give virus-creators severe penalties and possible jail times for creating and disturbing viruses. Would go a long way to combat malicious behavior online.

[glomtt]

01:10 PM on 04/06/2012

Awesome Go Twitter!

[johansmommy]

01:10 PM on 04/06/2012

This article is incomplete. It talks about Twitter and spam, but nowhere does it mention what Twitter is. I never heard of it. Why does the writer fail to decribe what Twitter is?

[chesscub]

03:03 PM on 04/06/2012

Imagine Facebook status updates limited to 140 characters and limited in thought

[jsgaetano]

10:19 PM on 04/07/2012

I've described Twitter as a web-based platform which replaces text messaging with something even worse.

[Rastus]

01:03 PM on 04/06/2012

IMHO twitter, by definition, is spam.

[ohiopositive]

12:39 PM on 04/06/2012

lost interest in Twitter pretty quickly, partically because of the spam. Hope they win this and normal people can just enjoy the tweeting world.

[jsgaetano]

10:20 PM on 04/07/2012

I do a bit of tweeting. I've noticed a very big drop in twitter spam in the last week or so. Used to get like 1-4 twitter spams every day.

[pfm102943]

12:38 PM on 04/06/2012

There needs to be more in the way of deterrents to the spammers such as jail time and severe financial penalties. Tool providers should be treated the same as drug dealers and penalized as such.

[c0astalgreens]

12:34 PM on 04/06/2012

It would be interesting to know the number of who the real followers of every real twitter account. If you have a twitter account and so egoistically proud and boastful to have million followers, it would be so embarrasing if it drops down to zero. lol