Twitter takes stand against spammers with new lawsuit
Twitter is taking a firm stance against spammers by taking them to court with a lawsuit.
Twitter reps explained on the official Twitter blog that one of the problems in this situation is dealing with "bad actors who build tools designed to distribute spam on Twitter (and the web) by making it easier for other spammers to engage in this annoying and potentially malicious activity."
This morning, we filed suit in federal court in San Francisco against five of the most aggressive tool providers and spammers. With this suit, we’re going straight to the source. By shutting down tool providers, we will prevent other spammers from having these services at their disposal. Further, we hope the suit acts as a deterrent to other spammers, demonstrating the strength of our commitment to keep them off Twitter.
It's not clear yet as to what financial or other claims Twitter is hoping to win from damages -- if the microblogging giant wins the suit.
Last year, Yahoo won $610 million in a judgement against spammers. However, that case commenced in 2008 and was just completed in December, so that can give you an idea of just how long this might take for Twitter.
Furthermore, it's worth questioning how worth it is to challenge spammers at this point. Numerous studies over the last year have asserted that mass spam attacks are actually down from levels we've seen in the last few years. The flip side to that is more serious and dangerous targeted attacks are replacing spam as the hack job of choice.
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