Pope Benedict's Resignation Spurs Spam On Twitter

Pope Benedict XVI decided to resign today and as soon as the news broke out so did the spam on Twitter. Spammers began to post messages with hashtag #pope on Twitter which were completely unrelated to the first Papal resignation in centuries.

Imagine a religious affair turning into ashes of ridicule as these tweets are being posted from accounts featuring young women who aren't as "decent" as the Catholic devotees who are following @Pontifex would want them to be.


Twitter finds itself in such awkward positions too often for our inconvenience. As soon as a news breaks out or a topic becomes too-hot-to-handle, all the spammers in the world turn to it to use it to their advantage. Too often then not, followers of a particular topic click on the link provided by these spammers instead of legitimate ones.

These accounts are fake and are basically automated bots controlled by a spammer who may have hundreds of bogus accounts. We are hoping that you are one of the people who understand that there isn't a young women operating these accounts. If you aren't then we would suggest more frequent visits to RHA. Read a little.

These examples are designed to make money through affiliated sites. These links are infected with malware and phishing sites. By using trending topics, spammers and cybercriminals drive traffic into their sites. This helps them to hack accounts and, in the long run, identities.

If you find an account that is tweeting spam please report it to Twitter so that they can take appropriate actions against it. However, this cat-and-mouse game isnt about to end anytime soon. Twitter's security team is fighting against spammers but the other team is hitting back and hard.

Cheers!

About The Author

This article is written by Sindhia Javed Junejo. She is one of the core members of RHA team.