Twitter impostors surface to sell book

Within the past 30 minutes, I have received Twitter follower notifications from a couple of high-profile Twitterers, or so it would seem.

The subject line of one reads "Duncan Riley is now following you on Twitter!" Upon clicking through to the profile, it's obvious that this is not the Duncan Riley that we know from The Inquisitr, but rather an impostor trying to cash in on affiliate rewards from the sale of the book, 5 Steps to Twitter Success. According to the book's site, which I am not going to link to here, it is authored by a man named Ken Reno.

It looks like Duncan, but something feels off.

It's not immediately clear whether Reno is behind these fake Twitter accounts, but they seem to just be spammers trying to collect the reward for an affiliate referral. Even if he is not behind it, Reno may have set himself up for this sort of behavior and abuse, promising 100 percent commissions for all affiliate referrals.

In the cases that I have seen, the fake Twitter users can all be identified by the use of underscores in their name, for example, "Duncan_Riley_", since the real name is obviously taken. So far the only Twitter users that I have seen impersonated are Duncan Riley and Andy Beal, but feel free to leave other examples in the comments.

I have to hand it to Twitter for handling this situation very effectively. When I started writing this post eight minutes ago, both profiles were up, and as I am writing now, I see that Twitter has suspended both of the accounts in question. I am glad that handling this sort of behavior is a top priority for Twitter, since fraudulent users like this can really detract from the value of a social network, if allowed to run rampant.

[MichDdot]

You have only just scratched the surface. Fake people have become a vicious plague for twitter in the last few months. Twitter is fast becoming the new 'myspace' unfortunately the same braindead spam is moving over with the notoriety. We have only just begun to see the potential of how dirty the marketing tricks will get.

Peace,
Mich d aka @MichDdot

[askjayson]

Hey Mich, I have seen a ton of underscored name come my way. I am a good target for spam as a social media, internet entrepreneur. Spam, phishing, hijacking, and hacking are all major threats to the social network properties. I say we build a data center dedicated to hackers. Make it a game. "hey here are the servers, now you try to blow them up, extract data and break the security and the guys on the other side will try and keep you out"

Could be huge, at least they can leave us alone, just not sure how much fun they will have if they can't affect people they don't even know.

All the best,
Jayson - http://twitter.com/askjayson

[Jason_Anderson]

Too bad you are publicly announcing the product's OWNER in this article. That's extremely damaging by including a link to his Twitter account as your readers may believe that it is he who is at fault.

Offering 100% commissions on a product is NOT a devious marketing tactic. The devious culprit is the affiliate. Consider this, the affiliate account has been suspended by Ken. I too had a "fake" follow on my Twitter account and clicked the affiliate link just to find out that the account has been suspended.

I think that Ken has done a good job in monitoring this as well and has been unfairly put in a negative light in this article. Companies and individuals need to take responsibility when they realize that their affiliates are spamming...and that's exactly what Ken did.

[inachu]

they should keep them active but redirect all profits back to the original person and not the fake skammer.

[nullvariable]

The very best way to shut down affiliate spammers is to cut off their money. Most companies that have affiliate programs don't want spam promoting their products and have very strong anti-spam policies. So if you take an extra minute to find the parent companies website and report the link the spammer is using it's often far more effective since the spammer is quick to move on once they're not making any money.

[andysowards]

I HATE those people! They follow/unfollow me daily at @andysowards They are freaking annoying!!!

[harrisonh1]

Nice plug. :)

[Harrison912]

Thanks, Harrison, for this great information. I'm typically on Twitter to socially market my safety and security web site and raise awareness for it's products so I'm always interested in any security issues there.