San Francisco — In a surprising turn of events over the weekend, micro-blogging outfit Twitter has filed a lawsuit in a federal court in San Francisco against five of its most aggressive spam enablers that it accuses of creating tools for spamming, as the social media firm battles a wave of automated tweets barraging real users with anything from Viagra ads to virus-ridden links.
Twitter now claims 140 million active users. As its user base is rapidly growing, it is often dubbed as a service that helps a Twitter account gain followers, and offers websites take control of an account, known as a bot, that follows or sends automated tweets at real users in the hope that some will follow the bot back or click through links the bot has sent out.
Hence, Twitter has had enough of TweetAttacks, TweetAdder, TweetBuddy, Troption, and Justinlover. So much so, that the micro-blogging outfit filed a suit against these five tool providers and spammers in San Francisco’s federal court this morning. Twitter fears these spammers could dilute the online conversation and irk bonafide users.
“Our engineers continue to combat spammers’ efforts to circumvent our safeguards, and today we are adding another weapon to our arsenal: the law,” Twitter announced on its blog today.
The micro-blogging site claims that it has spent around $700,000 in anti-spam efforts to combat the defendants’ marketing blitzkrieg. The defendants include JL4 Web Solutions, based in the Philippines and referred to in the suit as “TweetAttacks.” Other defendants are Tennessee-based Skootle Corporation, referred to as “TweetAdder”; “TweetBuddy”; and the individuals James Lucero and Garland Harris. It is seeking injunctions against each defendant as well as monetary damages.
As a matter of fact, this lawsuit is intended at people building spamming tools, such as software that latches on to trending topics and starts injecting irrelevant marketing messages into the mix.
The company describing the move stated–“With this suit, we are going straight to the source. By shutting down tool providers, we will prevent other spammers from having these services at their disposal,” Twitter said in a blog post.
The defendants could not immediately be reached for comment by Reuters.
“We have now focused on tool providers; They have willfully created tools that enable others to propagate spam on Twitter,” Twitter said.
Twitter now boasts around 140 million active users and more than 340 million tweets a day, which makes it a prime target for spammers. Moreover, the social media network says that the suit filed is intended to ‘act as a deterrent’ to spammers and send a clear message to would-be spammers that there are consequences for violating its anti-spam rules.
“One challenge in battling spam are bad actors who build tools designed to distribute spam on Twitter (and the Web) by making it easier for other spammers to engage in this annoying and potentially malicious activity,” Twitter wrote on its blog.
Besides the suit, Twitter is now more seriously beginning to tackle its spam problem–a longtime annoyance. The Twitter spokeswoman also noted that the company has also introduced internal tools to aggressively combat “mention” spam, which puts the user’s Twitter handle in a post designed to lure the reader to a third-party Web site. In January, the company acquired Internet security company Dasient, a deal aimed at bringing in new technology to fight off spammers.
Finally, Twitter is not the first tech company to go after spammers in court. In January, Facebook and the Washington State Attorney General filed suits against alleged “likejackers” that trick users into “liking” sites, and Google has also filed suits against spammers’ online pharmacy scams and work-from-home scams.