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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

#131

Post by _pecl »

leephillips wrote: post #130
_pecl wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pho…

IP meaning internet protocol number? What about students on a campus network, where there may be hundreds coming from the same IP? And you are managing hundreds of different IPs for your Twitter accounts? How does that work?

yes.

I'm not sure about all of the details; I'm sure there are a variety of indicators that go into spam score and once you tip the spam threshold you're banned. So I would guess that students on a school network do things well enough to stay safe, but if you have 1,000 bot accounts on the same IP it's just a matter of time before they're all gone.

So if you want to manage a network of fake accounts I try to use a proxy IP or VPN to connect to each account every time you connect to/with it. (Also clear cookies/cache, spoof the same device, etc.) I'm sure better programmers could work around this by compensating in other ways, but I'm not sure how.

Re: Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter

#132

Post by xanderstrike »

warcher wrote: post #67
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…

Protip: I moved my legacy phone number (the number you get for customer service calls, that I hand out publicly, etc) over to google voice years ago. It follows me from phone to phone as I move carriers, everybody can reach me, and their "Press one to connect to the phone" feature throws off robodialers very effectively. The only downside is that google voice smells like the kind of service that google doesn't regard…

Google Voice has been rolled into Fi now (when you transfer your number into Fi, it becomes a google voice number). I think Google Voice has a few more years in it at the very least.

Re: Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter

#133

Post by sitkack »

throwaway91111 wrote: post #74
CaptSpify wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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....

Bots must have real names. This is purely for marketing purposes so they can tie you back to meat space.

Re: Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter

#134

Post by problems »

andai wrote: post #116
problems wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go over to google and put in the words "buy retweets". That's really not a problem. They have full control over the accounts (via either fake signups themselves or script kiddie iStealer means), so anything like that in demand enough is probably something you can buy. A look at the history or content of mentions is probably the best bet to detect a faked account. Still, a clever person might slip by a cursory check.

Can you buy retweets from accounts with human followers?

Yes, if you can get those stolen accounts rather than generated ones.

Re: Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter

#135

Post by leephillips »

_pecl wrote: post #131
leephillips wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IP meaning internet protocol number? What about students on a campus network, where there may be hundreds coming from the same IP? And you are managing hundreds of different IPs for your Twitter accounts? How does that work?

yes. I'm not sure about all of the details; I'm sure there are a variety of indicators that go into spam score and once you tip the spam threshold you're banned. So I would guess that students on a school network do things well enough to stay safe, but if you have 1,000 bot accounts on the same IP it's just a matter of time before they're all gone. So if you want to manage a network of fake accounts I try to use a pr…

OK. I guess you could spoof your IPs in the bot program if you don't care about seeing the reply, which for this application you probably don't.

Re: Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter

#136

Post by matt4077 »

B1FF_PSUVM wrote: post #120
sigmar wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 disi…

> when disinformation campaigns can be funded by the highest bidder, and actual individual voices get drained out. Isn't that the normal state of things since Gilgamesh?

Yeah. They told me the New York Times could be bought for $2.50, but all I got was a stack of paper.

Re: Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter

#137

Post by doctorshady »

pjc50 wrote: post #54
doctorshady wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get your analogy, but the great thing about landlines is you can selectively forward unwanted callers to anything you feel like. Social media websites don't tend to have anything like that.

I've never encountered this feature myself. While social media at least has "block" and "report". And the collaborative API-driven blocklists used against organised troll attacks. Even USENET has a better killfile than my landline.

Look into call blocking, selective call forwarding.

Re: Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter

#138

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter

#140

Post by spydum »

leephillips wrote: post #135
_pecl wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes. I'm not sure about all of the details; I'm sure there are a variety of indicators that go into spam score and once you tip the spam threshold you're banned. So I would guess that students on a school network do things well enough to stay safe, but if you have 1,000 bot accounts on the same IP it's just a matter of time before they're all gone. So if you want to manage a network of fake accounts I try to use a pr…

OK. I guess you could spoof your IPs in the bot program if you don't care about seeing the reply, which for this application you probably don't.

that isn't exactly how IP spoofing works: i'd argue for the most part, ip spoofing is just a DDoS hassle. Its not very useful on a real service you intend to interact with (tcp/https require you to reply to those ip packets - it's not a fire and forget).
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