Social Media

Spam In Twitter Trends, Again (Update: Not Really Spam)


Twitter's trending topics are a great way to find out what's hot in the Twitterverse, but they're also a haven for malicious hackers and spammers who are constantly finding new ways on how to abuse them.

This time, an odd, vulgar hashtag has appeared in the trending topics, as you can see in the image below. It obviously doesn't belong there, and it doesn't lead to any actual Twitter conversations, but someone, somehow, managed to put it there.

*Update: this time, it's a legitimate trending topic. Commenter Mark Nagurski explains: "British actress Mollie Sugden died yesterday. She played Mrs Slocombe in UK comedy Are You Being Served and 'Mrs Slocombe's Pussy' was a running joke. This is a tribute from fans." However, Twitter is not showing any results for it, probably because its anti-spam filters have activated.


We've seen this done before via an onslaught of spammy or malware-infected messages send through dozens of bogus accounts, but this time the spammer seems to have reached trending topics with other methods. In any case, the topic will probably soon be removed, but Twitter definitely needs to work on better spam prevention methods.

The sentence above still stands, but in a completely different context which we haven't encountered before. It's possible that Twitter's anti-spam detection has worked all too well, removing the results for a legitimate trending topic. You can't really blame it: joke or not, at first glance the hash tag seems vulgar, but it can also be completely innocent, depending on semantics.

Again, Twitter needs to work on spam detection; not only to prevent spammy topics from entering the trends, but also to prevent legitimate topics to be labeled as spam.

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