If you’re following celebrities like Oprah, Michael Arrington, and Justin Timberlake you might find that folks are retweeting some odd stuff purportedly originally posted by the aforementioned celebrities.
For example, I was watching Greg Grunberg AKA Matt Parkman from Heroes (and the co-founder of Yowza) and noticed he was being re-tweeted with a vengeance. The tweet was simply ‘RT @greggrunberg guys watch”Transformers 2″ Movie Free online here [snip] Wal-Mart’ and it was sent out, in this case, by CarriCarrie012. A few clicks and we discover that young Carri is not “Goofy, intelligent, and determined!!!” as she claims in her bio but is actually a spambot.
The bot essentially takes a celebrity’s @ name and pretends to Tweet that they are supporting the viewing of pirated versions of major motion pictures for free, something someone like Grunberg would never condone (although I wouldn’t put it past Oprah).
When you visit the site you find it is essentially a phishing scam that eventually dumps out into an opt-in survey scam that keeps you going through ridiculous surveys until your “5 minutes” are up.
This brings up an interesting point about the implicit trust we put into Twitter and how it can easily be hijacked by those with nefarious intent. Also you really can’t watch any of those movies for free. I kept on filling out the survey until my clicking hand fell off and nothing happened. Don’t forget to Retweet this!
Seems like they are also putting trending topics in each tweet to maximize views….Lame.
Haha, Michael is quite clearly up there in the A-list ranks of Oprah and JT!
Genius! Twitter can’t even stop it the system is so simple.
“celebrities like Oprah, Michael Arrington and Justin Timberlake”…
If that was a joke/nudge/goof, then it’s awesome. If you were sincere, that’s kind of whoa.
we have to adore our master and commander.
Techcrunch: it’s the new Scientology!
haha ” celebrities like Oprah, Michael Arrington, and Justin Timberlake” somethings off here. ..
TOTALLY…JT does NOT belong on that list.
Oprah is a spambot.
Here is one I found:
RT @oprah You should spend every waking hour reposting this # 805-768-4521 http://bit.ly/oBsDJ
J/K
But seriously, that WAS a pretty decent idea…
Could you explain the spammer’s profit motive for this tactic?
The spammers get people to fill out surveys. People filling out surveys (for third parties) makes money for the spammers. Pretty obvious really (if you read the post).
Yet another reason for Twitter to consider officially integrating RT functionality into their product.
“although I wouldn’t put it past Oprah”
Care to explain?
YOU get a legal defense against the MPAA! YOU get a legal defense against the MPAA! YOU get a legal defense against the MPAA! EVERYBODY GETS A LEGAL DEFENSE AGAINST THE MPAA!
Ask yourself, which is more lame? A not-very effective spam campaign on Twitter, or the fact that you squeezed 242 words out of it?
Blog fail.
how about the fact that you counted all the words?
I’m sure he didn’t Copy/Paste to Microsoft Word.
I’m sure.
Lol. What is everyone’s deal? Every post I’ve seen here recently has a commenter grilling the author about posting content that doesn’t belong in TechCrunch. Is it really that hard to just skip the post after reading the first sentences?
Actually, I filled out the survey in hopes of watching Bruno… I ended up getting my cell phone charged for 9.99… about the price of a ticket… so yeah, it’s a relevant post.
This is the very reason why their is such a noticeable demographic shift. Among the upcoming generation embracing facebook as their social platform among other networks and having little to do with this horrendous web app called twitter.
And the place to watch movies is um Voure.com
Well, thanks for directing everyone to the free content.
Arrington is slick for mentioning himself in the middle of everyone else in this post..LOL
I’ve learned that all twitter profiles that feature a female torso with the face cropped off at about the chin level is a spambot.
Haha, that’s funny.