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Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter

bbc.com

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Re: Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter

#71

Post by fooey »

puranjay wrote: post #49
OliverJones wrote: post #20

Huh. The landline telephone business has, for a long time now, been compromised by spammers and bots (telemarketing calls and robocalls). I canceled my land line about four years ago after going for three months without receiving a single call I wanted. It seems the commercial social networks are headed for the same fate. And, they're headed for hardnosed and unpleasant regulation by governments. They probably need t…

Twitter is extremely forgiving with its account creation. An internet marketing buddy showed me how he could make 20+ accounts on the same IP address without Twitter throwing the ban hammer.

Being able to create loads of accounts doesn't really hurt anything. Leverage multiple accounts to spam and abuse signaling is what's harmful.

Re: Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter

#72

Post by _pecl »

jashkenas wrote: post #28

I would imagine that it's possible that some of the people reading these comments might already know a lot more detail about Twitter/Facebook bots than this story goes into. Although you fine folks might remember me from a few other projects, I'm currently a Graphics Editor at The New York Times. We're actively curious and interested in pursuing lines of inquiry about this sort of behavior, and if any HN'ers have any…

I personally have thousands of Twitter accounts I control just for fun; I mostly use them for pranks, though in aggregate there are a few million followers between them (not sure how many duplicates there are, or, ironically, how many of their followers are bots). You can even buy software to create and manage Twitter accounts pretty easily in blackhat forums.

For mine, I scraped a bunch of Instagram pictures for photos, auto-generated a bunch of bios using a few basic parameters, e.g. "Beer lover, proud parent." Names were easy - the most popular first & last names from census records, mix and match. Grab a few lat/longs and convert them to the biggest US cities and you have a location, find some data source to tweet from (breaking news is easiest) and you have a fully automated, human-like Twitter account. For bonus points, Pick a random color toward the low ends of the hexadecimal range ( rand(a..c)++rand(0..f)++rand(a..c)++rand(0..f)++rand(a..c)++rand(0..f) works fine) and you even look like your page is personalized down to the color.

Start following random people and 10% follow back (even more if you follow people who are tweeting about similar keywords as you - kindred spirits I guess).

The only tricky part is making sure you don't cross lines with your IPs. You could buy/rent them privately, but you really only want to keep a few accounts (3-5) to each IP, so that gets expensive ($.75/IP/month) when you don't have a really good reason to use your accounts. You can scrape free listings for them, but those are nasty, slow, and can cause bans if Twitter decides to take down a whole range or if you are forced to switch IPs too quickly.

Device type, browser, etc. is easy to spoof.

Should you decide to, it's also really easy to change name, username, and profile picture of an account in the future. So if I wanted a few thousand Trump-supporting (or Trump-hating) sock puppets I could have them today.

If you don't want to buy/create/manage Twitter accounts yourself you can get access to what's called a "panel." A panel is basically an automated, coin-operated network of fake accounts that you can control at wholesale prices. Want 5,000 followers? Plug $1/1,000 followers into the panel, supply the username, and you'll have them in a couple of minutes. Or resell 5,000 followers for $25 and pocket the $20 difference. For example of a panel, see this ad on blackhatworld: https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/the-biggest-smm-panel-yout.... Nothing special about this one, just the first I found when I googled. They're a dime a dozen.

I'm certain there are millions of fake accounts for every service imaginable.

Re: Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter

#74

Post by throwaway91111 »

CaptSpify wrote: post #21
danso wrote: post #2

This seems like a pretty straightforward thing to identify. I remember when the NYT's story, "The Agency", was published [0], some of the fake accounts it had mentioned were still up. Even though the accounts in that story were actually populated by real people, the sockpuppetry was pretty easy to identify. One: the accounts' past tweets right up until they started spreading the news about the fake U.S. disaster were…

Does FB really have an incentive to care though? Obviously it should dilute the effectiveness of their advertising system, but if people still keep throwing money at them... I'm not in that industry , so I'm genuinely asking

They seem to based on enforcement of their real name policy. Granted, if they don't click on ads, they may not care....

Re: Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter

#75

Post by dceddia »

sjs382 wrote: post #35

There was a "Ask HN:" post about Twitter bots the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13497235 Strange that these bots aren't spammy but are posting every minute or two. I wonder what they're for... https://twitter.com/superpolice001 https://twitter.com/superpolice002 https://twitter.com/superpolice003

Almost like one of those RSA/Google Authenticator/etc rotating numbers... always 6 characters, seemingly random, somewhat pronounceable. Weird.

Re: Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter

#76

Post by sigmar »

jashkenas wrote: post #28

I would imagine that it's possible that some of the people reading these comments might already know a lot more detail about Twitter/Facebook bots than this story goes into. Although you fine folks might remember me from a few other projects, I'm currently a Graphics Editor at The New York Times. We're actively curious and interested in pursuing lines of inquiry about this sort of behavior, and if any HN'ers have any…

These bots (and human run trolling accounts) have been widely reported on[1], but by many different organizations in different languages. Which seems to have made it not as widely known as it should be. I still see people arguing on twitter with what is clearly a bot.

I would like to see someone write the story of the overarching result of what a world will look like in an increasing internet-focused world, when disinformation campaigns can be funded by the highest bidder, and actual individual voices get drained out.

[1] Reports of Putin using online troll brigades pre-dates the creation of Twitter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_brigades

Re: Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter

#77

Post by andai »

puranjay wrote: post #49
OliverJones wrote: post #20

Huh. The landline telephone business has, for a long time now, been compromised by spammers and bots (telemarketing calls and robocalls). I canceled my land line about four years ago after going for three months without receiving a single call I wanted. It seems the commercial social networks are headed for the same fate. And, they're headed for hardnosed and unpleasant regulation by governments. They probably need t…

Twitter is extremely forgiving with its account creation. An internet marketing buddy showed me how he could make 20+ accounts on the same IP address without Twitter throwing the ban hammer.

Is there a special way to do it, or do you just.. do it? My undestanding is that you are allowed 10 accounts.

Re: Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter

#78

Post by tqkxzugoaupvwqr »

danso wrote: post #2

This seems like a pretty straightforward thing to identify. I remember when the NYT's story, "The Agency", was published [0], some of the fake accounts it had mentioned were still up. Even though the accounts in that story were actually populated by real people, the sockpuppetry was pretty easy to identify. One: the accounts' past tweets right up until they started spreading the news about the fake U.S. disaster were…

Some users don’t care when they grant a Facebook app the right to post on their behalf. Or, users type their login credentials into a phishing site which then can log into the account and send spam. The account would look like a real person because it is a real person.

Re: Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter

#79

Post by new_hackers »

camus2 wrote: post #56
ashark wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My cell phone's the same way now. Maybe one in ten calls, at best, isn't phone-spam. And that's with being on the Do Not Call list. I've been trying to figure out a way to do without an actual phone (except maybe a burner on the off chance I need to call 911) as a result. Text is by far the more valuable side of my phone plan, but mostly because everyone wants to use it for auth these days (I could switch to another…

> My cell phone's the same way now. Mine as well. I even get fake vocal messages on my voicemail, starting with a first name I might or might not know asking me to call back like it's an emergency and obviously the number is a premium-rate one. I was like wow, that's a whole new level of spamming. I can't imagine the future of spamming : data mining personnal infos on social media + customized fake messages just to m…

Hi camus2, this is your mother. I'm in a bit of a pickle. Can you please send me $200 via Western Union. Love you bunches!

Re: Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter

#80

Post by iamatworknow »

sergiotapia wrote: post #60

Twitter has become unbearable to use for news. Every single submission from news stations to President Trump is filled with combo-replies from people. 1 dude will bombard the tweet, then a chick, then a different guy. Example: http://i.imgur.com/zbyM7YG.png You need to scroll down at least 5 load-more's to see regular people tweets. It's a really terrible user experience that Twitter needs to solve.

>You need to scroll down at least 5 load-more's to see regular people tweets.

I personally don't find much added value in those tweets, "regular people" or not. They're basically YouTube comment level at this point.

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