What is Twitter spam?
“Spamming” can describe a variety of different behaviors. Here are some common tactics that spam accounts often use:
- Posting harmful links (including links to phishing or malware sites)
- Abusing the @reply function to post unwanted messages to users
- Creating lots of accounts or using automated tools to create multiple accounts
- Spamming trending topics to try to grab attention
This is a tricky one as Twitter itself is trending yourself software.
- Repeatedly posting duplicate updates
- Posting links with unrelated tweets
- Aggressive following behavior (for instance, mass following and un-following in order to gain attention)
Behaviors that constitute “spamming” will continue to evolve as we respond to new tactics by spammers. You can find a more comprehensive list of spam behavior in the Twitter Rules.
Anyone interested can check out an example of a Twitter like script using Mysql and PHP
