Posted on 01/25/2017 7:36:40 AM PST by Freemeorkillme
Massive collections of fake accounts are lying dormant on Twitter, suggests research. The largest network ties together more than 350,000 accounts and further work suggests others may be even bigger. UK researchers accidentally uncovered the lurking networks while probing Twitter to see how people use it. Some of the accounts have been used to fake follower numbers, send spam and boost interest in trending topics. Hidden purpose On Twitter, bots are accounts that are run remotely by someone who automates the messages they send and activities they carry out. Some people pay to get bots to follow their account or to dilute chatter about controversial subjects. "It is difficult to assess exactly how many Twitter users are bots," said graduate student Juan Echeverria, a computer scientist at UCL, who uncovered the massive networks. Mr Echeverria's research began by combing through a sample of 1% of Twitter users in order to get a better understanding of how people use the social network. However, analysis of the data revealed some strange results that, when probed further, seemed to reveal lots of linked accounts, suggesting one person or group is running the botnet. These accounts did not act like the bots other researchers had found but were clearly not being run by humans.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
Probably just used for denial of service attacks.
This has been known for a while.
?...........
Look at Sean Anthony’s posting history by following TexasGator’s link. It’s either an automated program to post new threads that never replies, or it’s a sleeper troll trying to build a legend.
I’ll try to bait a response here. Let’s see if we can smoke out the entity behind the Sean Anthony posts.
One of them is me. I set one up years ago with a “junk” email address and used it for a month.
One of the most annoying things about Twitter are the bot followers, people wanting you to sign up or pay for a bunch of followers. There are also people on there who take identity value from how many followers they have. Another annoyance comes from accounts with little cutesy sayings and no substance at all. Overall, I like it. I get Trump’s tweets and it’s a real go-to when FR is down.
A funny Facebook development. I met a woman years ago who was so proud of how many FB friends she had and it was about 50,000. She wanted to contact my wife, because I don’t have an account. The other day she told my wife she had blocked darn near everybody because of the election. She accidentally had signed up a ton of liberals as friends.
Of course they’ve all been deleted so the veracity of this claim can’t be verified.
Rush has been saying this for ages.
#FAKETWEET
Who knew (eyeroll)
From my perspective, 1/2 of accounts on Twitter are fake.
Lately, I get about 5-10 per day that were opened in Jan 2017, have never tweeted, have less than 10 followers, etc. They are clearly tracking me because of tweets I send.
I block them, block all who want to sell me followers, block those that are clearly click bait.
I block them, block all who want to sell me followers, block those that are clearly click bait.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Didn’t even know that was a thing. PM me with your email if you want a Gab invite. You can chose to simultaneously make it post to Twitter if you want.
Open offer. I have 5 invitations to offer. Periodically, they give me more, but 5 only at the moment. Otherwise, you’ll have to jump on a huge waiting list (Took a little over a week for me to get in).
1st come, 1st served. Invite sent via your email address.
Twitter stock fraud is based on fake accounts. They say they have more people just like Facebook does then there are actual computer users in most of the world.
Sounds like the sort of thing that Twitter itself would have the most incentive to see deployed.
Correct.
We have a Music Promoter/Manager here in WNY who claims to be a Social Media marketing expert. He charges them to help “grow” their base, then spends half of the fee buying them followers and likes. I hear he makes pretty good money doing it to.
I am already signed up. The notice for activation missed me, suspect the spam filter. I had them resend the notice, link did not show. It must be an issue with my email. My local provider went with Google a few years ago, they raised the fees at Google and they went with a provider that uses Zimbra. I can read my email through my browser, but have had difficulty getting any mail client to work. Since the local provider left Google, I’ve had difficulty with getting a mail client of any kind to work, even on my cell phone.
I use TLS security and no SSH, but primarily default to https: unless it’s not available.
Keep thinking I’ll have a quiet day and call my local internet provider to get a mail client working. (I have been running Linux since 1994, currently using Debian with XFCE)
Run LXDE, openbox(some of it) and an apt-get variant here. Mix of apt-get and yum, server side.
I emailed you an invite.
thanks.
My first Linux install was a UMSDOS version of Slackware. No GUI. Many years ago.
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