This is an example of the “New Twitter Spam” that is going around. Things like this don’t really surprise me anymore because hijacking someone comments is nothing new and this would be a variation of that for sure. This twitter account posts the old style RT every 10-20 minutes however, the accounts mentioned or inferred as the owner, never actually sent that tweet.
The following scenario is just from my observations and a little bit of research.
There are 5 accounts that benefit from this in some way by leveraging the reputation of the account mentioned in the RT. The first is the obvious spammer @TandyDando8156 by doing RT at the very least the person that is mentioned is going to check it out. This account, since its sole purpose is to drive traffic, is expendable.
The other accounts mentioned in the tweet are a little more difficult to assess the purpose and intent. This is a clear case of hijacking someones reputation for their own benefit. The most likely culprit of the accounts mentioned is the affiliate account @getskinnyfaster as they would have the most to gain financially. Some affiliates are known to push the envelope on what would be considered acceptable for their benefit.
The other 3 accounts, @kmrpr, @jasonader, and @davenmichaels are more legitimate but there is one that throws up a red flag as the possible mastermind behind this. There is no way of telling for sure without an in depth analysis but I’ll let you decide which one you think it is.
This looks more like a “test account” strictly to determine the effectiveness of this one scenario. The laziness of choosing the same four accounts tells me this and only posting the same information over and over again.
The scenario would look like this: the spammer account would promote the affiliate account to make money. The account would also include in other legitimate accounts and possibly one of their other personas online as well in order to give the account a “real person” feel to it.
In essence the spammer steals the reputation of the legitimate twitter accounts to make a profit for himself/herself. I would put this in the same category with the tabloid magazines using sensational headlines and altered photos of celebrity persons to sell more magazines. However, this is for another discussion.
Have you seen this or other twitter spam? Let me know and leave a comment below.
Thank you for linking to my post. I just found and approved two trackbacks from your blog that were lost in a sea of trackback spam. It takes so long to check each link that they pile up on me when I am really busy.
It is common for spammers to tweet at people as though they are replying to us or to make it look like we tweeted something of theirs and they are responding or RTing OUT tweet (that we never sent and never would).
I sometimes call them out publicly. If a spammer adds my Twitter username to their spam link and that is the only thing they ever tweet I report them for spamming - so that isn't a very bright strategy although it IS possible that some influential Twitter users with a lot of followers might RT something like that wilthout looking at it. (Not very likely though.)
People need to use discernment and not ASSUME that what APPEARS to be going on is actually what happened. Too bad you're using Livefyre. Are you sure that is the blogging community you best fit in? I come across your blog off and on and I would not usually see content on Livefyre type blogs.
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