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May 10th, 2009

Easily spam Twitter with trending topics API

Posted by Andrew Mager @ 4:47 pm

Categories: Commentary, Security, Spam, Twitter

Tags: API, Twitter, Cyberthreats, Spam, Security, Spam And Phishing, Andrew Mager


Last night while scanning the Twitterverse, my buddy Josh noticed that every trending topic was being bombarded with nasty spam.

With Twitter’s trends API, you can easily scan the feed for hot topics, run a spam bot to register usernames, and retweet the trending hashtag with phishing links.

So the new sidebar feature that lists trending topics and offers live search could be dangerous now. Be careful, and if something looks spammy, don’t click. Hopefully Twitter gets a handle on this soon.

Andrew MagerAndrew Mager is a web developer at Ning, Inc. in Palo Alto. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.



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  • Talkback
  • Most Recent of 7 Talkback(s)
Bit.ly normal behaviour not occurring here - Oops!
Hmm! Apologies. Seems like the normal Bit.ly behaviour does not appear to be occurring here. Thought it was independent of site but clearly not. Firefox add-on would provide a solution to this, but I ... (Read the rest)
Posted by: webmaestro Posted on: 05/18/09 You are currently: a Guest | | Terms of Use
Excellent Article!  JonAven | 05/11/09
RE: Easily spam Twitter with trending topics API  BocaJuniors | 05/11/09
RE: Easily spam Twitter with trending topics API  Neptune_Help | 05/11/09
Good shortners offer actual link on hover  TBonner | 05/11/09
Hopefully, ZDNet  3dguru | 05/12/09
RE: Easily spam Twitter with trending topics API  webmaestro | 05/18/09
Bit.ly normal behaviour not occurring here - Oops!  webmaestro | 05/18/09

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