at_spam

Determine if the TSN has been reported (in public) to Twitter's own @spam account.

If one or more users have received or observed twam from the TSN, and have taken the trouble to report the offending account to @spam, we assume with a high probability that this account belongs to a spammer.

Many Tweets to @spam reporting twam accounts appear to originate from trustworthy Twitter users. A single report of the TSN is probably a good indicator, however, two ore more reports from different users is a very strong signal that the TSN is most-likely being used to spam.

<at_spam> 
	<date>1264949491</date> 
	<exec_time>8</exec_time> 
	<raw_data> 
		<reports>1</reports> 
	</raw_data> 
	<result>2</result> 
</at_spam> 

Search Twitter for Tweets to @spam - most of which generally reference legitimate twam accounts.

All Tweets to @spam are sourced and processed at regular intervals and resulting data is stored indefinitely.

Of course, the @spam 'guidelines' are that you follow, get followed back, then send a DM to @spam, rather than report an potential twam account publically.

When examining Tweets to @spam, our matching algorithm will only pay attention to two of the most common report types.

Type One - the reporter notifies @spam of the Screen Name account they believe is possibly twam, placing the Screen Name as the first Tweeted word in the sentance - inclusive of the '@' at the start of the potential account, thus:

@spam @screen_name

- or -

@spam @screen_name is tweeting irrelevant links

Type Two - the reporter omits the '@' in front of the reported Screen Name account, but then does not include anything further in the sentance, so we assume that the single word Tweeted to @spam must be the intended reported Screen Name, thus:

@spam screen_name

However, the following report will not be classified as a potential twam account notification due to lack of '@' on the reported Screen Name and other words in the sentance:

@spam screen_name is tweeting irrelevant links

This is because if there is no '@' in front of first word in the Tweet to @spam, and there are several words in the sentence, we are not able to reliably assume that the first word really is a Screen Name.

An example of this might be:

@spam please can you stop foouser from spamming me?

…which would mean that the word 'please' be taken (incorrectly) as the reported twam Screen Name.