Why can’t Twitter stop spammers?

Anyone who’s used Twitter will very probably have received spam; you only have to mention some things, like iPads, and you’ll get a load of spam bots sending you messages.

Personally, I’m pretty suspicious of the number of svelte looking women with odd names in my followers list; I doubt they’re all interested in my take on Digital TV, and expect to be spammed by them at any moment.

What surprises me most, though, is that Twitter doesn’t seem to do anything at all to filter out spam – and I think they need to get a grip on that.

Ok, some of the usual techniques might be hard; it’s in the nature of Twitter that people will use shortened links, so you can’t see what they are, and that the same link will be reposted by many people, so that’s not indicative of spam.

But, looking at many of the spam messages I’ve received – where someone has sent them to me as an ‘@’ message, it’s pretty obvious, and I’m amazed that Twitter doesn’t stop this.

These messages all come from people who have recently joined – in the last couple of days – and have zero followers, follow no other people, but yet have sent hundreds of messages a day to other people.

Can anyone honestly tell me there’s a rational way of using Twitter like that? I can’t think of one, or of any good reason why you shouldn’t stop a brand new account with no followers from sending hundreds of @ messages to different people, every day. I can’t even envisage someone brand new to Twitter firing off 400 messages with links a day to people they’re not following, just because they’re new.

Today I’ve had spam from someone who joined two days ago, and has sent 72 messages; another who joined today, and has sent 438, and another who joined today and has sent 445. All with no followers, and not following anyone else.

Sure, a lot of Twitter clients (but not all) have a report spam button, but I’m starting to get a bit tired of doing this for them – and I bet a lot of people just don’t bother, either.

Does Twitter really want to wait until their service becomes swamped before tackling spam?

Q&A: Why can’t I get Freeview HD

Steve Livesey asks

I recently bought a Samsung LE40C580 LCD TV from Amazon.  Now it was described as having FreeviewHD built in, but after tuning I am only get the usual Freeview channels.  It has the FreeviewHD logo on the box and DVB-T/DVB-C/DVB-T2 in the specs.

I checked on Freeviews website to make sure HD was available in my area (Lincoln) before buying, which it said had been since March 2010.

Do you have any idea why I am not getting the HD channels?  Do I need another new aerial?

There are a number of possible answers to this sort of problem, so let’s go through them in order.

First, in some areas, the Freeview HD signal is not being broadcast at full power yet, and so the coverage is not as good as it is for the standard channels. So, just because you can get Freeview doesn’t necessarily mean you can get Freeview HD. However, since the Freeview web site (which usually errs on the cautious side) says you can, we can discount this as the problem.

Next, in some areas, people haven’t always used the “recommended” transmitter, either because of very local issues, like a tall building in the way, or because they want a different local region. For example, where my mother lives in Winchester, you can point your aerial at either Rowridge on the Isle of Wight, or Hannington near Basingstoke; the recommended side is Rowridge, but some people get better reception from Hannington.

The coverage website tends to tell you what you can expect from the recommended transmitter, but if your original aerial was pointing at a different one, because of a tall building or – which is not uncommon – a different transmitter got Freeview first – you might not be getting the correct Freeeview HD signals.

And that’s the most likely case here; Lincoln is more or less equidistant between two transmitters, Belmont and Waltham, though Belmont probably has a better signal in most of the city. However, neither of these provides Freeview HD until later this year.

The March 2010 reference most likely applies to the signal from the Emley Moor transmitter, which is one of the ‘advance network’ Freeview HD transmitters; that means it’s one that won’t be at full power until later – so even if you do receive standard definition from there, the HD signal won’t be strong enough.

So, the answer in this case is likely to be that the Freeview website is suggesting you use Emley Moor transmitter, but failing to point out the lower signal strength of HD. The two nearer transmitters are scheduled for switchover this summer, at which time you will get HD service from them, so the best advice is to do nothing, and just wait. If your existing aerial is a ‘wideband’ one, then you do not need to have it replaced, but you may want to have to repositioned at switchover to point to the transmitter that will be giving you the best signal.

Besides the Freeview website, another good site for coverage information is Wolfbane, which will tell you the transmitter you need, and which way to point your aerial.

One last thing

One other point to mention, which probably isn’t relevant in this case, is that if you live in a block of flats with a shared aerial system, there may be additional work needed to get Freeview and Freeview HD. I’ll explain that separately in another post.

Gone Digital’s gone mobile

For those who want to read this blog on the go (and so I can keep things up to date more easily when I’m using my phone), I’ve installed the WordPress Mobile Pack.

You may see the mobile version of the site automatically, but you can also request it by going to gonedigital.tv instead of gonedigital.net

I think all the internal links have been fixed so you won’t accidentally switch format going from one page to another, but please let me know if you spot anything weird.