A lot of spam today - how do I get the accounts blocked?

Here are a list of spam accounts that have sent the same message to me 5 times today - all exactly the same and I pick it up because of my interest in mobile learning.

How do I get these people kicked off - they are really ruining the experience - when they do this my screen fills up with the same message - thus it is very effective spam!

The SPAM:

(onlineschool): Free iPhones and a Switch to Google Mail: a Campus Tries Mobile Online Learning and Outsourcing - Chronicle of Higher Ed.
(homebasededu): Free iPhones and a Switch to Google Mail: a Campus Tries Mobile Online Learning and Outsourcing - Chronicle of Higher Ed.
(distancelearn): Free iPhones and a Switch to Google Mail: a Campus Tries Mobile Online Learning and Outsourcing - Chronicle of Higher Ed.
(distancecourses): Free iPhones and a Switch to Google Mail: a Campus Tries Mobile Online Learning and Outsourcing - Chronicle of Higher Ed.
(educationprogra): Free iPhones and a Switch to Google Mail: a Campus Tries Mobile Online Learning and Outsourcing - Chronicle of Higher Ed.
(degreeprogram): Free iPhones and a Switch to Google Mail: a Campus Tries Mobile Online Learning and Outsourcing - Chronicle of Higher Ed.
(online_degree): Free iPhones and a Switch to Google Mail: a Campus Tries Mobile Online Learning and Outsourcing - Chronicle of Higher Ed.
(freecollegeinfo): Free iPhones and a Switch to Google Mail: a Campus Tries Mobile Online Learning and Outsourcing - Chronicle of Higher Ed.
(fromhomeedu): Free iPhones and a Switch to Google Mail: a Campus Tries Mobile Online Learning and Outsourcing - Chronicle of Higher Ed.
(homebasedschool): Free iPhones and a Switch to Google Mail: a Campus Tries Mobile Online Learning and Outsourcing - Chronicle of Higher Ed.
(homeschooledu): Free iPhones and a Switch to Google Mail: a Campus Tries Mobile Online Learning and Outsourcing - Chronicle of Higher Ed.
(learningdistanc): Free iPhones and a Switch to Google Mail: a Campus Tries Mobile Online Learning and Outsourcing - Chronicle of Higher Ed.
(distanceschool): Free iPhones and a Switch to Google Mail: a Campus Tries Mobile Online Learning and Outsourcing - Chronicle of Higher Ed.
(schoolexpress): Free iPhones and a Switch to Google Mail: a Campus Tries Mobile Online Learning and Outsourcing - Chronicle of Higher Ed.
(homeeducation): Free iPhones and a Switch to Google Mail: a Campus Tries Mobile Online Learning and Outsourcing - Chronicle of Higher Ed.

I’m very frustrated

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mdy replied on May 08, 2008 17:30

Just piping in to say that this is exactly the same list of 15 accounts that another user has reported today in another thread.

For easy access, I'm listing the accounts as URLs below:
http://twitter.com/onlineschool
http://twitter.com/homebasededu
http://twitter.com/distancelearn
http://twitter.com/distancecourses
http://twitter.com/educationprogra
http://twitter.com/degreeprogram
http://twitter.com/online_degree
http://twitter.com/freecollegeinfo
http://twitter.com/fromhomeedu
http://twitter.com/homebasedschool
http://twitter.com/homeschooledu
http://twitter.com/learningdistanc
http://twitter.com/distanceschool
http://twitter.com/schoolexpress
http://twitter.com/homeeducation

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mdy replied on May 09, 2008 01:51

I had used http://twitter.com/help to submit a 'spam report' regarding these accounts the day before, and have now received an email reply from Twitter support.

Hi,

Thanks for the heads up. We've determined that this account is spam. We have:

* removed it from the public timeline
* suspending all update capability
* suspended all follow/remove privileges

We appreciate your help with finding and eliminating spam accounts. Not all account will qualify as spam, however. For those that do not, we recommend blocking the profile if you haven't already. Here's how:

1. Log in to Twitter.
2. Go to the profile page of the person you wish to block.
3. Click Block (at bottom right, in the sidebar.)
4. Click OKAY to confirm the block

We're working on a way to make it easier for you guys to flag accounts as offensive. You can add your ideas about the best way to do that here:

http://getsatisfaction.com/twitter/to...

Thanks for your help.

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Marjolein Katsma replied on May 09, 2008 18:47

well, I'll be... ;) sad to know I'm not the only driven mad by this bot cloud

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mdy replied on May 09, 2008 19:07

I checked the 15 accounts that are listed above and noticed that 14 of them haven't been updated in over 20 hours.

The first one in the list remains operational -- which IMHO is appropriate. It was the presence of the 14 other accounts that made them collectively spammy.

I’m happy to see that the spam report worked.

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I'm not sure keeping the one account is appropriate - there's still a lot of repetition within that one account, though some tweets are 'varied' by adding/removing a link. that's why I called it "Lead bot" - it looks like a bot itself, not a normal human voicing thoughts or reporting actions: content and pattern are totally spammy. And possibly the biggest giveaway: the profile webpage is a squidoo page... – Marjolein Katsma, on May 09, 2008 21:16
I finally understand now (learning as I dig) the point of this whole operation: that squidoo page! It doesn't matter if the tweets have links, the purpose is to have people click through on the (squidoo) page in the profile, which is where the page ("lens") owner can get an income from. How that works is in the Squidoo faq: http://www.squidoo.com/pages/faq – Marjolein Katsma, on May 09, 2008 21:40
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Marjolein Katsma replied on May 10, 2008 06:37

Ha! Squidoo have an anti-spam policy and a report form. Needless to say I used that form.

I’m feeling good fighting spammers

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Excellent! *thumbs up* – mdy, on May 10, 2008 06:50
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Marjolein Katsma replied on May 12, 2008 13:32

*sigh* onlineschool is still spewing the same tweets (text apparently scraped from RSS feeds!).

And no word from squidoo yet.

I’m getting very tired of spambots

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Marjolein Katsma replied on June 29, 2008 10:25

So... it took them a while but I just received an email from Squidoo:

Yikes!

Thanks for the note, Marjolein.

We've reviewed and locked these lenses, along with the accounts responsible for them.

Squidoo has a zero tolerance spam policy (http://www.squidoo.com/pages/tos) and we appreciate your help keeping a few bad actors from ruining the web for the rest of us!

We're working hard to make sure this doesn't happen to you again, but that might take a few days. In the meantime, please keep reporting any Squidoo spam that comes your way.

Thanks again for your patience and proactivity!

The SquidTeam

Sure enough, the Squidoo page that was the obvious target of the whole twam operation has now been blocked: http://www.squidoo.com/distance-learn...

Thank you, Squidoo! Well done.

Now, if Twitter could also lock the remaining onlineschool account, which continues to spout scraped headlines, we'd have one spammer less.

What about it, Twitter? or are you too "stressed" to bother about spammers?

I’m happy that spam fighting works - on Squidoo, at least...

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