Twitter slams top five spammers with legal suit
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Twitter has filed a legal suit against five entities for selling tools that send out spam tweets and clog up its network.
The suit names TweetAttacks, TweetAdder, and TweetBuddy, plus James Lucero of Justinlover.info and Garland Harris of Troption.com as its targets. In the legal filing, Twitter says that it has had to pour resources into its Trust and Safety team to try to stop spam, and has spent nearly a million dollars to counter the effects of the five defendants.
"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," the company said on its blog.
The filing points out that all of the accused have signed up for a Twitter account, which involves signing the terms of service that specifically prohibit spam generation, as well as selling software that also breaks Twitter's terms. Furthermore, they market their code specifically as being able to circumvent existing spam controls.
As for the goal of the suit, Twitter wants the defendants to be shut down and claims damages equal to the amount it estimates they have cost the company. That works out at $300,000 for TweetBuddy , $150,000 for TweetAttacks, a $100,000 bill for James Lucero, and for TweetAdder and Garland Harris, $75,000 apiece.
Twitter made clear that it wasn't just relying on the legal system in its anti-spam campaign, but is beefing up security-engineering efforts as well. Just how successful it is will depend upon the ability of spammers to react technologically, and whether or not they are worried about their legal position. ®
COMMENTS
AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHGGGGGRRRR
"pour resources into its Trust and Safety team to try and stop spam"
No no no no no no no no no!
"I'm going to sand and paint this chair." - "I'm going to sand this chair and then paint it."
"The actress binged and purged." - "The actress ate everything in sight before blowing chunks."
"We had the Trust and Safety team try and stop spam." - WAIT!
Unless your end sentence is, "The trust and safety team tried spam, and then the trust and safety team stopped spam", then they did NOT "try and stop spam"! NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO
Please, for the love of god, people! This is a phrase used by people who switched from high school to a vocational program, and drive a backhoe for a living! They're wonderful people, I'm sure, but they have an *excuse* to not know about grammar, whereas you - as *journalists* - do not!
I swear to god, if I'm ever a dictator, the next time I see someone from the UK write "I'm going to try and..." without meaning what they're actually writing, I'm going to sail over, invade Britain, conquer it, and
when I am through, I will TRY AND EXECUTE those responsible! And that does NOT mean that I will ATTEMPT to execute them! It means that I will TRY them, and THEN -
- OK, I'll stop. Yeah. It's late. I'm tired. I know. That was a bit much. Maybe a lot. But, really. "Try and"? It wasn't even in a quote. Hey, it'll be Easter in 35 minutes. My son is three. My wife told him something about Jesus - I'm not sure why. He said, "We should have Jesus come for Easter!"
Well, he's gonna be free, right?
Y'know, I should be happier about this...
...except I can't stop thinking about all the "sponsored tweets" that have been infesting my feed lately. Whenever I see them, I report the poster for spamming -- because basically, that's what it is. The fact that I'm given a "dismiss" button to make them go away doesn't make it any less annoying.
Seems to me that Twitter is just pissed off about outsiders trying to muscle in on their racket.
Indeed
When you see "RIP Jesus" trending on good friday, you can't help but admire the church for inventing botnets 2000 years before the rest of us. And as various people pointed out, didn't they read the ending?
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