Twitter's Gangster Spam Trap

Martin Keene, PA Wire / AP Photo Twitter’s innocuous-looking mobster game has turned the micro-messaging service into an unstoppable spam service. And just like the real Mafia, once you join, you can never get out.

Spam schemes are everywhere, and now they’ve hit Twitter. Early Monday morning, I received a rare email from a woman I respect tremendously, Marina Gorbis, executive director of Institute for the Future. She's the kind of person whose emails you open first. Turns out this wasn't an email at all, but a "direct message" from her Twitter account to mine. All it said was:

mgorbis: Hey, I just added you to my Mafia family. You should accept my invitation! :)

And it was followed by a link.

Wow, I thought. Marina Gorbis is playing some new game on Twitter, and asking me to take part? She's not the kind of person to do this on a whim, so assumed it must be something significant. I followed the link and got to this screen:

A Twitter-based Mafia game? I don't really have time, but I didn't want to insult Marina by rejecting her invitation. Plus I figured if she really thinks this is so cool, there must be something to it... But wait. What's that little gray bit? Terms of service?

I never bother reading those Terms of Service contracts, but anything that might get me out of having to play an Internet game—on Twitter no less—was worth a shot. Sure enough, it turns out that clicking on the big red button grants Mobster World access to your Twitter account, and gives the game the ability to send invitations automatically to all your followers and everyone you follow. Which it goes ahead and does instantaneously, before you even get to the next page.

In other words, clicking on that button turns you into a spambot. And if, like Marina, you have any social standing with the community following your tweets, your reputation is now in service of a company, using your account and your name. With your permission. Then your friends see the big red button, click on it, and so on. A classic pyramid scheme.

Mobster World isn’t controlled by Twitter, which is, at its core, a platform. It’s one of the thousands of applications out there created by people or companies, ostensibly to make the service more useful. There's no information about the company running the game on the Web site, and a domain search only reveals that its operators are hiding their identity through an anonymous proxy service. That sure inspires confidence.

Worst of all, once users realize they have been scammed and attempt to cancel, there is no way out. They can click the "cancel" button and read through a big warning about how the step is irrevocable. But, once clicked, the cancel button doesn't actually do anything. The account remains active, and the permission given to the Mobster people to spam the account's followers and followees remains intact. Like the real Mafia, once you join, you can never leave. Not alive, anyway. The only way to reliably end its hold on you and your people is to close your Twitter account, altogether. Virtual suicide. Talk about a killer app.