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Twitter steps up fight against spam
Silencing rogue tweeters

By Elinor Mills

Published: Friday 17 October 2008

Twitter is stepping up its actions to fight spam, which has been plaguing the site since earlier this year and appears to be spiking this week.

The company is looking to hire a spam engineer, preferably one who has worked at a big search or email company, according to a 'tweet' by founder Evan Williams.

That person would likely work closely with the "spam marshal" that was hired in August.

The hiring move was praised by the Twitter community.

The latest job posting "is another sign that Twitter is maturing as a business and is using its VC funding wisely", says a post on the Stop Twitter Spam blog. "And it's a refreshing move by a company who seems to understand that cutting engineers when your product is 'ready' is a short-sighted move that will hurt you in the long run."

Twitter also has changed the way it handles suspended spammer accounts, replacing the entire suspended page instead of redacting the web links but leaving them in the profile section.

However, the suspended profiles remain viewable in Profile Search, and people may still stumble across the suspended sites with the rogue links that way, notes Chris Boyd, research director at security specialist FaceTime Communications.

Boyd wrote in a blog post: "All in all, a good move to combat the increasing amounts of rogue profiles clogging up Twitter - and kudos to them on waving the banhammer at so many spam profiles overnight. Quite the bloodbath, from the looks of things."

The Twitter co-founders were voted onto silicon.com's exclusive Agenda Setters list this year, which details the most influential individuals in tech.