Twitter Eyes Signatures To Kill Fake Followers

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.)"

False Positives?

[zildgulf]

I wonder what the false positive rate is for the signature system? The false negative rate is 5%. I would need to know more information before I could figure out the false positive rate and how many legitimate accounts are flagged by this system,.