Most users of Twitter are familiar with followers having strange names and avatars. Everyone pretty much knows that these are probably automated fake accounts, known as bots.
Its true users Twitter often reject these bots when they decide to settle their account a little. But an English researcher believes there are a lot more bots out there than what we think and that we see from time to time in our account.
The bots are with you
Juan Echeverria, a technician computers at UCL, has published a paper on one network 350.000 Twitter bots as he calls it Star Wars botnet. He believes that they can send spam, manipulate public opinion, and pollute the Twitter API stream. Bots are created and controlled centrally by a botmaster. His research began by sifting through a sample of 1% of Twitter users to better understand how people use the medium. But along the way, the investigation revealed multiple linked accounts, meaning that one person or group is running the botnet. The accounts they don't behave like most bots out there.
Echeverria and his colleagues found that Star Wars Bots:
- They send quotes from at least 11 Star Wars novels,
- Each tweet contains only one offer, often with incomplete sentences or broken words at the beginning or end
- Bots never do retweet.
- Each bot has its own built-in lifespan.
- Every bot has
- Bots choose the source of their tweets only "Twitter for Windows Phone".
Echeverria and colleagues have started one by clicking here and one Twitter account called "That is a bot!", where real users can report the Bots they have seen and help raise awareness.
May The Force Be With You.
