Stealth Spamming and Kitty Tweets are popular new techniques of con artists. These criminals are phishing for usernames and passwords, offering to sell you automated programs to "Add 10,000 Followers weekly", or promoting Get Rich Quick schemes.

Sometimes they trick you into revealing your password, so they can hijack your account and send out spam to others using your username and Twitter account.

On Twitter, the Stealth Spammers either tweet messages with their silly claims, or go "under the radar" and send you DMs (Direct Messages), private communications, with links. These links lead to a variety of scam sites, which typically shout at you to "Register Now. Enter Your Password. Start Earning Big Money!"

They typically skip such standard features of credible websites as About pages, FAQs, links to reputable sites, and Client Lists.

Twitter has warned users to never click on links in DMs unless you really know the sender to be benevolent. Problem is, most social media con artists use social engineering to trick people into liking them.

Look at Human Capital Group on Twitter. Can you spot the dead giveaways that indicate they're Stealth Spammers?

http://twitter.com/Human_Cap_Grp

Following 4,743

Followers 4,612

Tweets 5

Why would 4,612 people Follow someone who has only tweeted 5 messages? 

It's because some Twitter users are using 3rd party applications, convenience programs, that automatically Follow anyone who Follows them. So they don't bother to check out the Twitter profiles of these spammers who Follow them.

 The spam is not being delivered via tweets in this case. It's being delivered via DMs with links to malicious or deceptive web pages.

Another common tactic is "kitty tweets": social engineered messages that include inspirational quotes, what they ate for lunch, details about their pets or children, favorite movies, "love your tweets", songs they like, personal aspirations, random thoughts, chit chat, etc.

 Their intent is to fool you into thinking they're "nice & normal." Social media gurus have trained them in how to pretend to be average members of an online community.  Then the spammers sprinkle in their con artist tweets.

They speak of Attraction Marketing, private sex videos, online pharmacies, affiliate programs, MLM (multi-level marketing, like Mary Kay), lead generation, investment opportunities, leveraging your Twitter Followers (ripping them off), overseas employment, tax-free income, six figure blogging, compensated blog posting, and other scams.

These tweets often take the shape of one message directed to multiple Twitter users:

@randy87 Get 10,000 Twitter Followers each week with TwitSpit! [link]

@OfficePotato Get 10,000 Twitter Followers each week with TwitSpit [link]

@PeteParry Get 10,000 Twitter Followers each week with TwitSpit![link]

@vaspersthegrate Get 10,000 Twitter Followers each week with TwitSpit! [link]

Check the Bios of Twitter users. Suspicious descriptions are generally clues that the person or organization is up to no good.

EXAMPLE:

• Bio Lingerie New York is the brand raising arm of the Seven Bar Foundation. We use the power of the luxury lingerie industry to fuel microfinance institutions.

By receiving email notifications of new Followers, you can click on links to their profile pages, and quickly see the tell-tale marks of Stealth Spammers, Kitty Tweeters, and other malicious spammers and scammers.

When you determine that a Twitter user is a spammer, be sure to get them kicked off Twitter. Go to their sidebar, under Actions, click on Report For Spam, then Okay in the dialogue box that opens.