On the Analysis of Twitter Spam Accounts in Saudi Arabia
Twitter spam accounts try to spread malicious content, deceive or advertise certain thoughts over Twitter network. Different approaches have been presented both in industry and academia to identify spammers on Twitter. This study aims at understanding the behavior of Twitter spam accounts targeting Saudi Arabia. In this study the author performs an empirical analysis of Twitter spam accounts in Saudi Arabia by applying previous techniques found in various research studies for extracting and analyzing such accounts. The activity levels of spam accounts as well as their content were gathered over a two months period. The study not only analyzes the content of spam accounts but also recognizes their behavior. Results show that Twitter spam accounts targeting Saudi Arabia are naïve and still in their infancy. Third party tools are used to control them for spreading duplicate content and perform retweets. Also trendy hashtags are polluted with specific content in a way to frame the public opinion.