Clean Tweets, a New Spam Filter for Twitter

Spam is a constant nuisance on the Internet and while its volume and diversity is growing each year so are the tools to combat it. Most email services offer powerful spam filters, though they aren't perfect, as do many blog hosting services. One service, however, that has seen a big rise in popularity in the last few months, Twitter, has also seen a big rise in spam messages but has done little to combat them. A new tool named Clean Tweet aims to 'clean' up Twitter searches by removing most of the spam tweets.

“Anyone who is a frequent user of Twitter Search knows that there are a lot of people (and the number grows every day) that SPAM the trending topics with anything from "Get Rich Quick Schemes" to affiliate links and even people that blatantly ask for more followers. It is annoying, waters down and makes Twitter search and Trends less useful. There are times when I view a trending topic and 90% are spam or worthless tweets,” Clean Tweet's webpage reads.

Clean Tweet is a Firefox extension, available here, that modifies Twitter searches at Twitter.com or Search.Twitter.com by removing spam messages using two very simple, yet effective, filters. The first one removes any tweets coming from accounts that are less than one day old. This deals with a big number of spam messages as most of these types of accounts are discovered and blocked by Twitter within a day. The second one removes tweets with hashtags for three or more trending topics on Twitter, as many spammers use this method to help spread their messages.

If there are any messages that make it through the filters users have the option to manually delete them. Of course, the system isn't perfect but it should do a great job at least for the immediate future while spammers adjust or until Twitter finally introduces its own measures.