It seems spammers on Twitter are using some curious methods to get their message across (thanks to David Cawley for pointing me in the right direction).
Check this out:
Yes, that is vaguely peculiar. Here’s another one:
The spammers are using a system of writing that involves jumbling up the middle letters in the words, which means they’re still readable. There’st some confusion as to whether or not this “system” was developed through research at Cambridge University – this person says “yes”, while this person says “no”.
I have no idea either way, but to be honest I’m more curious as to why the spammers are doing it. I know Twitter keeps an eye out for malicious URLs and the like, but I don’t believe they determine if an account belongs to a spammer based purely on the words they use. This could be a monumental waste of time on the part of the spammers, although if nothing else it did make me sit up and take notice.
If that was the purpose of the switcharound, they’ve failed there too – rather than clicking on the XXX dating site link they’re promoting, I’ll be reporting them to the spam department. Not sure they’ll get much satisfaction from rearranging the word “Banned”…
Christopher Boyd