Twitter scams always prey on our fears and weaknesses, don’t they? And they often seem to arrive by way of direct message (DM).

We worry that something we may have said or done (and shouldn’t have) has gone viral, so those “what are you doing in this video” or “your [sic] famous now” DMs can send a chill, so you click them just in case. And bam! Account compromised.

Or we give in to the desire to see a public figure lose it and click a link promising to show Obama punching someone in the face. Compromised again.

This latest scam though is probably the most alluring: A “tip” to get in on the next big thing online before it hits mainstream. What could it be? They’re not telling, but you’ll get FILTHY RICH if you find out!

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Twitter is doing a lot to combat spam. The dedicated @spam and @safety teams work their little cotton socks off identifying and removing suspicious-looking tweets and accounts, and there are many ways that users can help out, either by reporting spam directly to Twitter, or using a third party app.

However, it’s not enough. It seems like you can’t comment on anything that’s popular and in the mainstream on Twitter – iPads, iPhones, Starbucks, BMW and KFC Double Down sandwiches (just me?) – without getting a loosely-related, keyword-alerted tweet from a spambot a few moments later. And while it’s certainly true that users can and should be playing their part in battling this menace, it simply isn’t viable that we have to rely on Twitter to then manually take care of everything for us.

No, what we desperately need are email-like spam filters on Twitter. And we need them now.

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In a bid to strengthen its resolve against malware and other malicious attacks, Twitter has acquired Dasient, an internet security company founded by ex-Google staffers Neil Daswani, Shariq Rizvi and Ameet Ranadive, for an undisclosed sum.

The move appears to be largely a talent purchase, and Dasient will be bringing their “technology, tools, and team” to the revenue engineering team at Twitter, effective immediately.

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The Guardian has a great interview piece with Twitter’s resourceful (and ever-upbeat) Del Harvey, who in her two-and-a-half years at the social platform has gone from tackling a moderate spam issue on Twitter all by herself, to becoming the lead of a rapidly-expanding and continuously-challenged Trust & Safety team.

The biggest problem? As her team has grown, so has the size – and intellectual evolution – of the spammers themselves.

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