A network of false accounts of mysterious size of 350 thousand cases can be found on Twitter

ByAndreas Eldh

Twitter prohibits acts of automatically generating accounts and tweets, and Twitter continues to strive to remove bots that violate the terms. In such a circumstance, it turned out that over 350,000 bot accounts quoting part of the novel "Star Wars" were evaded by escaping the monitoring of Twitter.

The `Star Wars' botnet with> 350k Twitter bots
(PDF file)https://arxiv.org/pdf/1701.02405v1.pdf

Massive networks of fake accounts found on Twitter - BBC News
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-38724082

Juan Echeverria of the University Science Department at University College London studied 1% of Twitter users as a sample to study how people are using social networks. Echeverria said in a survey that he accidentally noticed that the network of more than 350,000 bot accounts is managed by one or a single group.

A bot refers to an application that automates a specific action, and a bot account is an account that automates sending tweets and messages. It is used to receive money, increase the number of followers by the client, and operate specific trends. According to Echeverria, the large number of bot accounts discovered this time is different from the conventional bot, so it is highly likely that Twitter's monitoring system has not found it. The bot discovered by Echeverria has the following features.

· Tweeted from a place where no one lives
· Messages and tweets are only posted from Windows Phone
· I quote something from the novel "Star Wars"

ByJorgeip

Mr. Echeverria gave the person who found an account that behaves like this a bot report account "That is a bot!We urge you to tweet. Some of these accounts have been confirmed to be sold and rented, but for the most part they do not know what they were created for, and they can not get information on the creator of the network It is said that.