Detecting spam in a Twitter network

Sarita Yardi; Daniel Romero; Grant Schoenebeck; danah boyd

Detecting spam in a Twitter network

Sarita Yardi ,
Daniel Romero ,
Grant Schoenebeck ,
danah boyd

First Monday | January 2010 , Vol 15

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Spam becomes a problem as soon as an online communication medium becomes popular. Twitter’s behavioral and structural properties make it a fertile breeding ground for spammers to proliferate. In this article we examine spam around a one-time Twitter meme—“robotpickuplines”. We show the existence of structural network differences between spam accounts and legitimate users. We conclude by highlighting challenges in disambiguating spammers from legitimate users.