Joost Schuur's dashboard

fireman4 started following the question "How should obvious spam Twitter accounts be reported?" in Twitter.

VincentVegas started following the question "How should obvious spam Twitter accounts be reported?" in Twitter.

A comment on the question "How should obvious spam Twitter accounts be reported?" in Twitter:

Thanks much for the update, mdy! – Amy Muller, on October 01, 2008 04:44

mdy replied on October 01, 2008 01:49 to the question "How should obvious spam Twitter accounts be reported?" in Twitter:

We can now also report spammers by sending a Direct Message to Twitter's @spam account.

To do this, you'll first need to follow http://twitter.com/spam. You can then send a direct message to @spam either by:

1. Typing a direct message from the "What are you doing?" box
Ex. d spam @spammy1, @spammy2 are spambots!

2. Sending a direct message from your phone
Ex. d spam @spammy3 is yet another spambot

3. Composing a direct message at http://twitter.com/direct_messages

A comment on the question "How should obvious spam Twitter accounts be reported?" in Twitter:

And there's a third one: http://twitspam.blogspot.com – mdy, on July 07, 2008 16:13

A comment on the question "How should obvious spam Twitter accounts be reported?" in Twitter:

Thanks mdy for the information. I am trying to do my part also by reporting obvious spammers. My frustration isn't that I don't think that Twitter is serious about spammers. It is that you have not improved the reporting system. What you have currently feels like something from 2005. A simple link on the profile page "Report as Spammer" is the obvious solution. – James W. Gentry Jr., on July 07, 2008 16:03

A comment on the question "How should obvious spam Twitter accounts be reported?" in Twitter:

Hi James. 8-) Some of the things that Twitter has done to combat spam are mentioned here: http://gsfn.us/t/jcq#reply_528321. Also, I've logged well over two dozen spam reports in the last month, and Twitter responded to those and took action. I can totally relate to the spam frustration, though... as Twitter becomes more popular, it seems more spammers come and try to game the system. – mdy, on July 07, 2008 15:13

A comment on the question "How should obvious spam Twitter accounts be reported?" in Twitter:

How is that "Official Spam Plan" Comming together. 3 Months seems like an adequate time frame? No? How much longer do you need? – James W. Gentry Jr., on July 07, 2008 14:38

Joost Schuur replied on June 09, 2008 03:15 to the question "Facebook password reset after installing ping.fm application" in Ping.fm:

Word back from Facebook was a suggestion that I had fallen prey to a phishing attempt elsewhere and that my account was reset as a precaution. That sounded bogus to me, since I hardly use their site, and am always cautious about the URLs I type my login details into (in fact, I use a password manager most of the time, that's smart enough to know it for me), so perhaps I simply got caught in a wider net they cast of people potentially affected.

Either way, they made no reference to ping.fm, and, timing aside, I have no reason to suspect you guys. Let's assume that ping.fm was not related at all.

KrissyMo replied on June 07, 2008 00:23 to the idea "Please bring back "Invite Keys" for Wiki 2.0!" in PBwiki:

Hey all,

We've come up with a few options to fix the login problem and we'd like to get your feedback.

We are setting up presentations on June 11, 2008 between 3:00 - 6:00 PDT. If you are interested in joining us, please sign up here- http://tinyurl.com/6bxc7w

You will need to have access to a phone and an internet connection.

Thanks!
Kristine

Sean replied on June 05, 2008 00:58 to the question "Facebook password reset after installing ping.fm application" in Ping.fm:

Facebook apps have no access to passwords or other sensitive information. The only information we store is a session id that allows us to set status whilst you aren't logged into Facebook. We don't even require you input your login credentials to use the application.

I would take this up with them as I am 100% sure it has nothing to do with our application.

Joost Schuur asked a question in Ping.fm on June 05, 2008 00:02:

Facebook password reset after installing ping.fm application

I just got an email from Facebook claiming they had to reset my Facebook account password 'for security reasons'. The email is legit and not a phishing attempt, and comes only a day after I added Facebook support to ping.fm. Any chance installing or using the ping.fm Facebook app caused them to freak out?

It's unclear so far if there's a direct correlation between the two, but I rarely use Facebook for much of anything, and ping.fm was the only recent app I installed. I posed the question to their contact address and will post the response I get from them here.

Joachim Bengtsson replied on April 20, 2008 15:56 to the discussion "How would you prefer to report Twitter spam?" in Twitter:

I think it's pretty simple. If someone is following ten thousand people, and fifty-six is following him/her, it's pretty damn obvious that this is a spammer. Just put a cap on the amount of people you can follow; you can't realistically follow over a thousand people, unless you only use twitter for posting and ignore reading the people your follow.

Katie Lohrenz replied on April 20, 2008 12:45 to the discussion "How would you prefer to report Twitter spam?" in Twitter:

Agreeing with several other people:

1. In the web interface, I think this link should appear near the "block" link.
2. I would love to be able to do this by SMS. When a freaking Toshiba TV follows you, it's pretty obvious that this is spam and it needs to go away NOW.
3. I am uncertain how I should deal with the somewhat-spammy friend whores. I've gotten follows from people who've tweeted "I'm trying to get ____ followers by the end of the week!" and have clearly friended every friend of every profile they've clicked on. This feels like spam to me, because they don't know me, they don't care about what I post, we have nothing in common, they're just hoping I follow them back so they can look popular. Is this spam? Is this okay user behavior? It dilutes what I'm trying to accomplish with Twitter. Is it time for a max number of new people you can start following per day?

Joost Schuur started following the idea "Please bring back "Invite Keys" for Wiki 2.0!" in PBwiki.

A comment on the discussion "How would you prefer to report Twitter spam?" in Twitter:

Why limit it? Let's offer a range of options: instant notification for each follow as it happens, weekly digests, AND monthly digests. Then everyone's happy. – weskimcom, on April 19, 2008 18:36

mdelfs replied on April 19, 2008 11:35 to the discussion "How would you prefer to report Twitter spam?" in Twitter:

Lets say weekly or bi-weekly and I like it!

mdoeff replied on April 19, 2008 06:13 to the discussion "How would you prefer to report Twitter spam?" in Twitter:

+1 for weskimcom's proposal for a "digest" email. I proposed something similar on this thread:
http://getsatisfaction.com/twitter/to...

weskimcom replied on April 19, 2008 06:05 to the discussion "How would you prefer to report Twitter spam?" in Twitter:

I hate adds from people who are either spammers or just foolish people who follow thousands of others for no apparent reason. In my dream world, I would receive a monthly digest/report email of new follow notifications rather than each one in its own email. By each person's username, I would want to see the following:

a) Their twitter profile: Name, location, Web site, bio.
b) How many people they follow and how many follow them.
c) How many people we follow in common.

This way, I only get bugged once a month, and I can easily determine which if any of my new followers are worth following back without having to go to their individual twitter pages.

Whaddya say, twitter?

mdy replied on April 19, 2008 03:06 to the discussion "How would you prefer to report Twitter spam?" in Twitter:

mdelfs said:

why has it taken this long to implement something?With the technology it could have been done since day one.

I'm just guessing, but here's what I think -- since we each have to explicitly choose to follow someone on Twitter, the thinking was that Twitter users wouldn't have to deal with that much spam, and therefore spam-handling wasn't a priority on Day 1.

Later, Twitter *did* recognize the problem and they actually took action by adding the Block feature (that wasn't there on Day 1 either). I believe that came about because some people were persistently unfollowing and refollowing people, just to generate a new 'user is following you' email. Block took care of that.

Now that the situation with spam has gotten worse with the spambots, I'm encouraged that Twitter is listening to our grumblings and is evaluating ways to address the problem.

A final note: in a recent FastCompany interview, the founders say Twitter has been prioritizing enhancements that will improve the system's reliability, and I for one can understand that. People will stop using Twitter if it's not reliable, and if no one's using it, then the spam situation won't matter.