Twitter Eyes Signatures To Kill Fake Followers 52
mask.of.sanity writes "Researchers have developed a signature system being examined by Twitter that hold promise to cut down on the amount of fake accounts used to deliver spam and malware.
The signatures were developed during a study into the semi-underground market of fake accounts and was subsequently used by Twitter to eliminate an impressive 95 percent of several million accounts identified in the research. It applied elements like account names, the timing of the account creation, and browser identifiers to identify fake accounts. The 10-month study found that the creation of fake accounts at its peak represented 60 percent of all new accounts. (Paper here.)"
Re:Lots of this research going on... (Score:0, Insightful)
For those who don't want to search, here's a link [slashdot.org]
Cat and Mouse game (Score:4, Insightful)
FTFA:signatures built on elements like account names, the timing of the account creation and browser identifiers to identify fake accounts.
It would be wise for them to beta this tech first before actually implementing it full scale. For a $360M a year practice [cir.ca], there will be people who will find a way around it. Everyone thought Captcha was hackproof when it first came out and that has basically mutated into a system which can be used by neither human or machine.