Directionality

[sniffnoy]

Can someone explain to me why it seems that people on Twitter don't want spambots and such following them? I really fail to see what the adverse affects of this are. Worst thing that can happen, ISTM, is that someone goes to look at your followers and ends up on some spambot's Twitter page. That hardly seems like a threat.

-Harry

Comments

[grenadier32.livejournal.com]

It's true, really--if evildoers want to mine people's unprotected profiles for data, there's really nothing that following those users gets them. What it does get them is the same thing sending spam emails gets them: people clicking on malware links. Spam has a very, very low cost to send out, and it's not secret that Twitter, like email, has a lot of very stupid/uninformed users. If a spambot follows 700 people and just one of them clicks on a spam link and becomes infected with malware or has their account hijacked, that would be a success for them.

It's worth noting that for most users, following them sends them an email that encourages them to view the profile (and thus the links). It's also worth noting that Twitter unfortunately encourages URL shortening, which is very useful for spammers when hijacking people's accounts or whatnot. (If my account were hijacked and you see me post "New blog post! http://bit.ly/[randomCharacters]", wouldn't you click?)