Bots and Spam Take Over Larry Merchant Keyword
The day after the fight, Twitter search results became littered with tweets from fake users or bots using “Larry Merchant” as the keyword. The tweets contained links to spam websites about travel and cheap flight fares, and car and health insurance, all of which seemingly used the same design template. Sample URLs included:
- Healthytreatmentguide.com
- Easytravelanywhere.info
- Biztravelaccess.com
zveloLABS noticed that the domains were only registered for one year–a common characteristic of malicious, phishing and spam websites. These spam websites rarely stay live that long, though. They are typically shut down within a few days or weeks. zvelo has categorized a multitude of these websites as “spam” and will automatically and periodically revisit the URLs in case they are taken down and purposely relaunched at a later time.
Twitter Search Results Littered with Spam Tweets
Following are screenshots of Twitter search results showing the tweets that contained the “Larry Merchant” query, along with the links pointing to spam websites:
Image 1: Spam on Twitter – these tweets pushed hot photos of Angelina Jolle and stated Larry Merchant suffered a heart attack
Image 2: Spam on Twitter – these tweets pushed Natalie Portman and Paris Hilton photos
Image 3: Spam on Twitter – more tweets using the “Larry Merchant” keyword to lure people to spam websites
Spam on Twitter – Fake User Account
The following example is a fake user account used to transmit spam on Twitter:
Image 4: One of many fake user accounts used to distribute spam on Twitter
Spam Websites
The following screenshots are examples of spam websites that Twitter users were pushed to:
Image 5: Spam website about cheap flight fares and travel insurance
Image 6: Spam website promoting travel insurance and cheap flights
Image 7: Spam website pushing health insurance
