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Spammers have found a new way to use Twitter. This one lets them harvest email addresses easily, and use these addresses to do their dirty business. The good news is that you can avoid this practice by simply not tweeting your email address. Have other tips to avoid being spammed? Share them with WebProNews readers.
I was having a talk with Twellow‘s lead developer Matthew Daines, and he pointed out that a simple query on Twitter Search can return large numbers of email addresses that spammers could potentially exploit.
"You can sit and just watch the email addresses steadily trickle in," he noted. "I wouldn’t doubt it if spammers are harvesting these."
Results for such a query might look something like this:
"It would be trivial to write a script that gathers these addresses," he added. "They could have several hundred thousand over a few weeks at the rate they trickle in."
The ability to search for email addresses has always existed on search engines like Google, but Twitter and it’s real-time updates brings a whole new element to the matter. They come in fast, and they’re always going to be up to date. This is why it could be enticing for spammers.
"The Twitter stream really weeds out all sorts of irrelevant data and cuts right to the email addresses within 140 characters, so it’s a lot less intense, and would require very little coding skill," says Daines. "The thing is this makes it just too easy to get email addresses."
Warren Riddle at Switched makes a good point about the threat. The retention rate among Twitter users has not been the greatest, and the potential for spammers to harvest users’ email addresses might turn some off too, although the ball is in the users’ court on this one.
Twitter may want to consider taking some kind of precautions to prevent this kind of abuse. Spam is already a huge problem plaguing email and the web. When a service continues to grow in popularity the way Twitter continues to do, such abuse should be a great concern.
The lesson here is: Don’t throw your email address in your tweets unless you want it to be searchable. That means it will be vulnerable to this kind of practice.
Some are probably thinking that this is common sense, but looking at the query that the above screenshot is lifted from makes it pretty clear that people are not really thinking about this. And if they are, they must not care.
Are you worried that spammers are getting your email address on Twitter? Tell us.
Thanks for a tip
I’m sure you’re joking, but to be clear, I am not condoning this behavior. Matthew and I actually talked about whether or not we should even write about it, but ultimately decided that this is probably not a new idea for spammers and that since they can do it so easily, it could be a genuine problem, so we felt it appropriate to warn those who had not considered it.
Thank you for sharing your information.www.netvitrinim.com
Yes, twitter search is like heaven for email spammers / email “marketers”
There are already “spam-followers” on twitter. You notice that you have a new person following you that is following 13,000 people, has 2 updates and maybe 10 people following them (who are likely doing the same thing). All they are trying to do is get you to click some link that they probably get paid for per visitor.
If you want someone to have your email address, use the direct message feature. If you’re going to put your address out there for the world, expect the world to send you some junk.
While I consider myself pretty knowledgeable on how to avoid letting spammers get my email address I totally overlooked what they could be getting from Twitter.
Thanks for pointing it out.
thanks,thanks for a tip…
Wow, I didn’t even think about that issue. Good think I’ve never twitted about my email address!
Twitter is one reason the US is falling further and further into a soon to be depression. If those people who waste their time actually started to think and produce nothing could stop us…….but as long as there are twittertwats thats more money for me!!!
Found it. I knew eventually some twat would come up with this word.
Its one of the “four letter words”, and frankly i am surprised the founders of Twitter did not take into consideration the possibility
there would be these sort of word associations made.
Which word is going to take over? LOL
I think it’s not just twitter.. I’m wondering if here would be good idea to write email address as well? But most places ask for it and no choice but give one.
I am quite amazed that anyone would tweet their email address. I know some members show a business email address on their Twitter profile, but that is quite different.
Giving out an email address in a forum or on a social site is simply inviting spam and phishing emails to flood into that email account.
Even with a spam filter on the email account, spam is not something anyone ought to encourage.
It is also observed some spam twitter profiles(Mostly porn) follows me, and it is very disturbing.It is very time taking process to check every follower’s profile and block the spammers.
The biggest problem, especially for businesses, is not that spammers are sending spam to the email addresses they harvest, it’s that the emails they send out appear to be sent from these harvested email addresses.
People open their email and then assume that the spam is actually coming from these innocent parties. The last thing a legitimate business wants is for potential customers to think they’re sending spam.
I agree with the poster that stated ‘that spammers are sending spam’ to people as if they come from the email addresses they harvest. This is especially true of Gmail accounts. In one day, I received 17 emails from different Gmail addresses…all with the same body of text and signature. This was obvious spam and the sender’s email was definitiely harvested.
hadn’t even thought of that, thanks!
I get enough spam already. Don’t need another source!
I have to salute to those Internet people who have been so creative to find this trick and make full use of it for spam. Thank you for sharing. Although this is not a good practice to promote, I must say this promote creativity and observation in the Internet world. Let’s use it for good and educate other people to avoid the bad.
Surely everyone knows by now if you display your email address anywhere on the net it can be potentially harvested by spammers.
What you thought because it was Twitter it was safe?
I keep thinking people are smarter than they really are. “Well, DUH!” is a good reply to this concept. I echo “Neil” in saying What makes you think Twitter is any safer than any other application on the ‘net?
But people persist in thinking the only people who read THEIR stuff are people like them … they just don’t consider the many others “out there” who manipulate and take advantage of every opportunity to either do mischief or try to sell more Viagra.
May I add here, since hopefully some not-so-savvy folks will read your article to: Be careful what you post ANYWHERE on the internet, no matter how comfy you feel with your personal set of inline friends. That means, don’t put your personally identifying info on Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn etc – you are opening yourself up to millions of total strangers, and not all of them are your new best friend.
Thanks for posting your tip, even though I immediately thought “wow, that’s dumb – doesn’t everyone already know that?” (meaning, posting one’s email address on Twitter for the world to use.)
I guess common sense isn’t … common.
Doesn’t everybody have a designed spam email address? Face it, at least one of your email addresses (if not all) are going to find their way into spam databases. The email address I give to this website is my designated spam account. Not that I think you guys will abuse it but this is just good policy. Following this procedure, you can give out an email address publicly and not worry too much about whether it gets into a spam DB, just accept it will and deal with it for just that one email address. Then be extra careful with protecting your primary email address.
You would definitely think it would be obvious to everyone but the fact is it isn’t and people leave them selves open to being spammed.
It’s sad and annoying but there are definitely ways to avoid this and that is by making people aware of situations like this.
Thanks so much for sharing!
This is not good but I am sure that a lot of people who don’t know this will start doing after reading this.
Jawad
you are not suppose to put your email addresses on networks ANYWAY. also, is it me or the world is getting dumber?
It would seem to me that not to much can be done about this and this occurs on pretty much all the social networks not just twitter, all I personally can say is that if some unethical jackass’es have to resort to these tactics to begin with they are pretty sad indeed. For me I simply delete any and all E Mails that I do not know the origin of, it saves problems saves my computer and removes annoyances that I would rather not deal with.
Hi,
Each time I subscribed to a social network, I always use a fake e-mail so, no one can spamm me…….
And after, if I see one of my best friend’s, I will give him my real e-mail…..
I agree. The spammers are going to do it anyway. Only awareness can slow it down
your right spamming & hacking is on the rise
I’m on FaceBook as well as Twitter for socially marketing my safety and security web site so I’m not one to share my personal email. Thanks, Chris, for sharing.
Of course sharing personal info in social networking sites is really foolish….specially one should not share at Twitter, where half of the members keep on searching something or the other !!!
This is actually a common sense. You should not post your email address publicly including on forums, blog posts, and social media sites like twitter. Not only on twitter, similar queries can be done in search engines like Google and Yahoo too.
Sometimes you may be forced to place your email addresses on a site so that you do not lose potential customers.
But a site like twitter? Another trick is harvesting Mobile phone numbers for SMS advertising. I have seen it happen
I agree that this is something that can be done pretty much anywhere and not just twitter. I also agree that having an email account specifically for giving out in these instances is a good idea. If you create an email account that you use for public use and need someone to send you something you just search for that email and don’t worry about the spam.
This will keep your personal email private. The spammers can spam all they want and it gets them nowhere which is what they deserve :0)
It should be obvious NOT to fill in your e-mail (or other credentials) on Twitter?!
Thanks, it’s a good tip, we should be careful every time we post our mail in the net
I’m surprised people would twitter their email address.