Trashing Up Twitter (more): Donald Trump?? - September 10th, 2009

Image via Twitter Search

I’ve recently noticed a disparaging spike in twitter spam, and while that’s pretty much normal in and of itself, this time it’s different. Donald Trump seems to be named in at least one spam-tweet every minute, and it’s only getting worse. So, I got curious.

Where do the spam links go?

I decided to go ahead and be the sacrificial lamb on this one and hit as many of the Trump spam links as possible, to see where they all lead. What I found was interesting, if not somewhat expected. The links don’t all lead to the same place, but they do all lead to the same thing. For the most part, these links (always shielded by URL shorteners, like bit.ly) take you to one of two main landing pages that look completely dissimilar at first glance, but after a couple seconds of actual inspection it’s a quick revelation that they’re both the same page dressed up in different clothing:

The Spam-Can: My Max Life

Here’s where it gets interesting: These trashy spam pages seem to be some sort of geocities-style DIY spam network. The main URL may be “mymaxlife.org,” but the page itself is a person’s name. Even better is the crappy (fake) error page that loads at that main URL. Without the full address to one of the spam-pages, the domain is seemingly worthless.

Example: mymaxlife.org/richardhiggins-cp

The obvious next question would be if there is an actual Richard Higgins behind that particular page or not. The sad answer is that we’ll really never know, since the domain itself is pretty much bunk. Every page has a similarly realistic-sounding name attached to it, and none of them show any sign of personalization. This spam does NOT have a flavor.

Donald Trump’s name is missing from the spam-sites.

That’s right, he’s completely missing, in name, image, and even spirit, in any of these pages. The closest they come to ever mentioning him is by loosely alluding to his presence, as “The Biggest Name In Business,” “The Man,” and my favorite- “HE.” Yes, that’s a capitalized HE.

Trump Innocent?

That’s the part that I was a bit let down about, since it means the Trumpster is likely innocent of something heinous for once. On the flip-side, it’s comforting to know that once his army of lawyers find out about it, a fairly decent portion of spam on twitter will vanish as servers are killed with fire.

Or will they be? As I mentioned before, the actual webpages themselves don’t ever mention Trump, or even show his likeness. The tweets may be making claims based solely off his namesake, but Twitter accounts are plentiful and easily replaced. They can be shut down a dozen at a time and not affect a devoted spam-master.

This isn’t exactly a new shtick in the spam underworld, but it’s easily the largest execution of reputation-theft I’ve ever seen. While the idea of there being no recourse against this sort of thing is a scary one, I’m going to keep my fingers crossed and watch to see what happens. If anybody has the resources to make a dent in this, it would be Donald Trump.