If you’ve used the 140 character social networking site, Twitter, for any length of time, you’ve probably been inundated with direct messages pushing everything from online pharmacies to the best porn sites and everything in between.
Many of these spam messages are also laced with website addresses that result in Twitter users falling victim to a phishing scam. Up until now, Twitter has had a more reactive approach with these malicious links by undoing any damage as necessary including unlocking and/or resetting hacked Twitter accounts as necessary as well as suspending the offending accounts.
However, things are about to change according to Del Harvey, the director of Twitter’s Trust and Safety team. According to a blog post on the company website, Twitter has developed a URL shortener similar to what Google introduced some time back to assist with their ranking methology. With Twitter, website links sent either through an email notification or a direct message will be shortened using the twt.tl shortener.
By deploying this technology, Twitter has effectively launched their own anti-spam program as they will be able to identify and intercept malicious links as well as prevent their spread. Twitter will also be able to neutralize bad links that were sent by an email notification that resulted in their users clicking on the link.
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