# Saturday, 14 April 2012
Like a lot of folks on Twitter, I have a search column open that notices mentions of my name. It mostly catches spammers linking to places my books can be downloaded for free. But lately, there's been something weird:




Here's how that tweet looked originally (about two weeks earlier):



So the strange spam tweets:
  • Have one letter randomly removed
  • Have two letters randomly substituted
  • Lost the + in C++ and replaced with spaces (common when being passed through a URL)
  • Are using the exact same URL as before, so this isn't some weird attempt to be paid for clicks
  • Have usernames that appear to be random strings

So there's something going on here, something spammy, but I don't see how they benefit. Is it to dilute an otherwise all-spam stream with some "useful" links? Should I report them to Twitter? If anyone knows, please clue me in.

Kate


Saturday, 14 April 2012 13:48:34 (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)  #