Spam is part of the internet. Whenever you choose to surf, play an online game, or simply check your social media profiles, you’re bound to be bombarded by spam of some kind. Most of us accept this as fact and just live with, closing pop-ups and deleting random messages as they appear, but sometimes spam can get out of control and ruin otherwise enjoyable website and gaming communities. To prevent that from happening to Twitter, researchers created a scam that specifically targets spammers in an attempt to alleviate Twitter spam.
A team a researchers from the University of California, Berkley , and George Mason University worked with Twitter to purchase more than 125,000 fraudulent Twitter accounts that were created over a ten month period since June 2012. Using these accounts, the researchers created a program to sniff out fraudulent accounts and stop them from being created.
Thus far, the results are proving to be successful. Twitter has since deleted millions of fraudulent accounts that were already active and stopped 90% of 14,000 fraudulent accounts the researchers made in order to test the system.
Time will tell if merchants will be able to get through the safeguards, but, until they do, Tweeters can now enjoy a nearly spam-free environment.
Source – The Verge
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