Hot Spam

guest post by Matt Balara

It appears my theory posted back in July wasn’t so misguided after all. This from “Turning Up The Heat on Spam” from the Twitter blog:

Suspending a spam account only works after it’s already caused some
damage. We have enhanced our admin tools to more accurately factor your
feedback for a more timely diagnosis. When you block a spam account, we
take note—when more people start blocking a spam account, we go to red
alert. Blocking also puts that account out of sight and out of mind so
you don’t have to see it anymore.

It seems that taking the time to block a spammer does help get rid of them faster. And if you tweet the block with the hastag #twitspam to encourage others to follow suit, we’ll be shutting them down faster than they can type “surprisingly attractive inflatable boats”. Now, if we could only do the same with email…