The dark side of Twitter



Tweet

Barracuda Labs analyzed more than 25 million Twitter accounts, both legitimate and malicious. The purpose of this part of the study was to measure and analyze account behavior on Twitter in order to model normal user behavior and identify features that are strong indicators of illegitimate account use. The study reviews several key areas including True Twitter Users, Twitter Crime Rate, and Tweet Number.

Key highlights from the Twitter research include:

• In general, activity is increasing on Twitter: more users are coming online; True Twitter Users are tweeting more often, and even casual users are becoming more active. As users become more active, the malicious activity also increases.

Only 28.87 percent of Twitter users are actual True Twitter Users.

Half of Twitter users tweet less than once a day, yet one in 10 users tweet five or more times a day and 30 percent of Twitter accounts have never tweeted.

One in every eight Twitter users has at least 10 times more followers than they are following.

Only one in 10 users is following more than 100 users, and almost half are following less than five.

The Twitter Crime Rate for the first half of 2010 was 1.67 percent.

http://www.net-security.org/secworld.php?id=9654