The short answer is no (or at least I don’t think so), however it certainly LOOKS like they are. There have been several accounts created that appear to be linked to Radio One such as:
- radio1girl372
- RadEEogrl517
- RadEEogrl789
- RadEEogrl903
- RadEEogrl845
- RadEEogrl899
- RadEEogrl333
The accounts all look like this,
If you notice, the links in the profiles all point to what appears to be a radio one site, however it’s actually a site that is called starnix.org that prominently displays the Radio One BBC logo. A lame case of brand hijacking. It’s actually quite clever because by using a tinyurl in the beginning and the words “radio one” at the end of the url, users will actually think they are visiting a Radio One website.
It’s unfortunate when something like this happens because Radio One is actually on twitter with a few real accounts, now many users are going to think that Radio One is spamming twitter. A few of the spam accounts have already been suspended but the issue that anyone can send out links that appear to be from YOUR site, remains.
What are some ways to deal with this?
- twitter can implement a “report spam” button on twitter accounts that allow anyone to instantly report spam-like or suspicious behavior
- members of the community to take it upon themselves to find the real Radio One accounts and let them know what’s going on
- twitter can naturally detect spam accounts through their algorithms
- users can block spam followers, with the new “followers” email that twitter has implemented, blocking has become quite easy and efficient. If you see an account with 10 followers that’s following hundreds of people, it’s probably spam and worth blocking.
- send a message to the twitter spam account
Any other ideas on how individuals, brands, or twitter, can protect users from spam? What do you think of the Radio One spamming?
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