Why You Were Added to Twitter Spam Lists

Over the last few days, Twitter spammers have been urging users to find out Louis Tomlinson's phone number, hear a leaked version of One Direction's new album and get a free iPhone.

What's notable is that these spammers weren't sending tweets or direct messages. Instead, they made use of Twitter's list function, adding people to various lists and indirectly pointing thousands of users toward spam sites.

Lists are typically used to organize Twitter users into more distinct groups. You might have separate lists for celebrities, colleagues and friends, which allows you to monitor several different streams at the same time through tools like TweetDeck. A few months back, Twitter increased the number of lists each user can have from 20 to 1,000 and the maximum number of accounts in each list from 500 to 5,000. Read more...