Ryan Tuosto Implicated In Twitter Spam Account Scheme!
[May 20, 2009 SocialNetEffect.com] In a test that appears to have gone sour, evidence is pointing to fledgling programmer Ryan Tuosto as the photos below will show.
What’s The Deal?
What is happening is a bot (a program designed to act for a human) is creating Twitter accounts at a rapid rate and finding followers. Unfortunately, this software is creating accounts that sign up to follow the same people, and they send auto direct messages to their new followers that auto follow back.
Note to spammers: do not use the same AutoDM for every account you create.
This is the message that is being sent to every recipient:
Note to spammers: If you are writing a program to create people’s names, capitalize both the first and last name!
Now I visited this website that is being autoDM’d around the web and here is what I get:
Interesting that the salespage is missing, right?
Note to spammers: when spamming a website URL to a bunch of people, make sure you at least are using a host that does not show your real domain name on it. Oh, and have a salespage so that you can make money on the few morons who actually decide to buy a product from a spammer.
By the way, I now have a nice collection of videos to add as a bonus on another product I may want to sell in the future… If you click on the download page, you can download his products for free.
So how do I get the idea that this is Ryan Tuosto’s doing? After all, a hacker could have used poor Ryan’s domain after hacking his site.
If you can’t read the above let me paraphrase it: Ryan Tuosto is on a Japanese Microsoft Answers site asking the microsoft people, “Hey everybody. I’m trying to use WebBrowser to remoetly log into a site and perform a basic action on the site. I’m running into problems though so maybe you brilliant people can help 
The first step is logging in to the site. Here’s the form code for the login”
But that could be any site, right?
When he shows the code, he says “This is the code for the JavaScript function thats being called by the ‘checkall’ and ‘follow’ buttons that my program needs to press.:
Hmmm, check all and follow… what site uses follow and check all when first creating an account? Certainly not Twitter, right?
But apparently the Microsoft Team in Japan did not help Ryan very well because he ended up placing this ad in GetAFreelancer.com:
Program manages Twitter accounts for people looking to use Twitter as a marketing platform (ie, spam).
So this is the evidence. I am sorry if this is all circumstantial and Ryan is not the guilty party. But I will leave that for the Twitter police to decide!
Have an amazing day!
Micheal Savoie
http://twitter.com/michealsavoie
PS – If you like my reporting or if you received spam from Ryan’s robot, please leave a comment. Our comments come in three flavors, text, audio and video!
Hey Michael,
Great post! Where do you find the time to play detective?
I saw all the spam DM’s but didn’t take time to track down where they were coming from. Let alone track down the questions being asked.
But I do find that the gift of free videos was nice since there was no sales page
Keep up the good work, I think your next case should be the Britany Video DM’s
Play Video Comment
For those of you without video, I thanked Randy the Hermit for his comment and asked him about the weather in the Virgin Islands… since the weather is a little chilly in Florida today.
Also, I promised him I would get right on the Britney Video Case.
That video is cool! But you have seen my face before do you really want it on your blog?
We aren’t as chilly as you guys but we have been getting rain almost everyday for the last three weeks.
Good thing I work indoors on the computer.
Michael,
You certainly have done your research but I have some corrections to your infomation! I am creating a service that allows people to automatically find and follow people with similar interests (in accordance with the rules and regulations of the Twitter API, which can be seen here: http://apiwiki.twitter.com/ ).
The automatic direct messages are a feature of TweetLater.com a popular twitter management tool that is publicly available for anybody to use.
Additionally, this could hardly be considered spam, as users must follow back in order to receive direct messages or content of any kind, and they can simply unfollow if they don’t like the content they are getting.
I ask that you please remove this post as I find it offensive, and it also stands to impact my business as a freelancer.
You can reach me if necessary at:
RyanTuosto at Gmail dot Com
Oh, and by the way, that code that you’ve shown isn’t even mine. You’re using that contextually with images of me posting in a software development forum to make it look like the two are related.
Sorry, this is a news blog, we do not censor the news. I will post a retraction once I have been convinced.
You say you are creating a service to find and follow users with similar interests? How do you do that? By creating a bunch of accounts that send people to a product you are trying to sell even though the sales page is missing?
Explain to my audience what you are trying to do.
Your best way to correct your image is by giving us valid information, not through censorship of the news. You may be working on something that has a potential for usefulness, but when you test it out by using a (somewhat)self-serving message you may have a tough time getting Twitter to believe you.
Creating empty accounts is one of the definitions of spam.
And the code, by the way, was a screen shot of one of your posts on the Microsoft Answers Japan site. You are welcome to click on the link to verify it.
So let’s discuss this a little more with you filling in the details a little better. I am all for letting you clear your name, but let’s do it with facts.
Have an amazing day!
Micheal
Hey Michael,
First let me address all the issues you’ve brought up, then I’ll explain my new service which is about to launch. I think you and your audience will actually be really excited about it.
First, regarding the forum post you mentioned, it isn’t even talking to Twitter. In fact its completely unrelated to this new product. Check out the source code from FlashTweet.com you’ll find that is the site my old project was interacting with.
Regarding the created accounts, in order to ensure the service is working on multiple accounts I had to create multiple accounts. Likewise to duplicate the functionality of TweetLater’s auto-welcome message I had to test this feature out as well on multiple accounts. Pretty simple.
Unfortunately I did have to create some empty accounts, but if I took time making these accounts not empty, I wouldn’t have been working on this absolutely amazing program.
So what does it do?
The user provides a list of keywords of interest, or people with similar interest. My program will automatically befriend these targeted followers (using twitter’s own API and rate limiting specifications). What does this amount to? Hundreds of new, keyword focused friends every hour that you can reach with your message, your product, your anything!
That’s not all. Give my program an RSS feed of your blog and never post in two different places again. My program will take your posts and automatically post them on your twitter account.
Anything else? You bet, sometimes people just don’t want to be your friend. My program will automatically unfollow non-mutual friends after a certain time period.
This product is truly a goldmine for anybody who wants to harness the power of twitter.
Maybe we can come out of this misunderstanding in a good way and when the product is ready for beta I’ll look towards you and your audience for reviews as you seem to be hosting a quality site here.
Before I go, I just want to say that Twitter has built in methods of preventing spammers:
http://apiwiki.twitter.com/Rate-limiting
http://help.twitter.com/forums/10713/entries/14959
and that the twitter community has little to worry about. I’m an active member in the Twitter Development discussion and the their security staff is made up of some bright people who do their best to give us the best Twitter experience.
Take care and all the best,
Ryan Tuosto
Ryan,
I understand. You are alpha testing software and the accounts you have to create don’t need to be filled out to help you see if the software works.
But think about how much better you could track results if you used a test that did not look so much like someone attempting to game the system. If you were to use accounts with filled out profiles in specific niches (like what people who will be buying your software would be doing) and then see how well you can get your software to convert those autofollows into buyers of products that you recommend instead of autoDM to them.
One of the biggest complaints I have with Bill Crosby’s system (Twitter Traffic Machine)is the way EVERYONE who uses it autoDMs “How would you like to significantly increase your followers in 30 days? http://myspamlinkhere.com”
So, while your tactics were not the most respectful of the people who received your new followers, I do see how it was not your intent to spam.
I recommend you ask some folks to beta test it now that you are making progress, so that when they use it with a real account, a real person will be getting any complaints.
Getting 15 new autofollows each day with the identical sales message really does bring out the detective in me.
And, I would be interested in trying out your software when you need beta testing done.
Micheal
I should have a testable version out in the next couple days!
Also, that problem of user’s getting multiple identical direct messages won’t happen anymore.
I’ve implemented a campaign system where users create groups of accounts based on the keywords they want to target. Within these groups, the same friends will not be added to any two accounts. This will prevent any duplicate content to twitter users.
Also, I don’t mind if you leave the news post up, but I would ask if you would at least remove all references to my name in title, text, and image.
Thanks,
Ryan
It looks like your program will be very useful. It would definitely be a good product to review on http://ProductInAWeekend.com prior to your launch.
I think you should look at having a major marketer create a training course around your product, complete with results and videos on how to do various tasks.
It would definitely be a good source of massive sales.
Keep us posted so we can update our audience.
Thanks, I didn’t know about the ProductInAWeekend site, but I have very big plans for launching this product as well as a parent site for other great traffic software. In addition to that I’m also preparing a site which will offer members frequently updated lists of master resell rights products, one time offer templates, squeeze pages, free videos, free PLR content. Everything you need to generate sales in internet marketing with the exception of traffic. That leads into this Twitter tool, as well as the other traffic services I have in the works.
Keep us posted, because The Social Net Effect is a very powerful way to make your presence known on the web! I am sure the community at large will be glad to have tools like this available.
One product that you should definitely recommend to your customers will be the Advanced Twitter Marketing System developed by my friend Doug Champigny. In it he discusses how to avoid being labeled as a spammer, which can easily happen if you just shoot out affiliate links everywhere without adding value to the community.
In fact, that reminds me of a great feature that should be included in someone’s automation software (hint hint) – the ability for the software to identify phrases that should be retweeted. By retweeting, you can gain a lot of goodwill from fellow Twitter users to the point where they retweet you all the time.
Keep us posted,
Micheal
Hey,
TweetFleet.net is now up and running!
Michael,
Can you please do something about this article. When people google search my name “Ryan Tuosto Implicated in Twitter Spam Scheme” appears in the top results. It is impacting my business and my reputation.