TFW a bunch of (automated) private detectives in the UK seem weirdly fixated on The Guardian and miniscule changes to their own follower counts. #TuesdayThoughts
cc: @ZellaQuixote
cc: @ZellaQuixote
We found 21 "private detective" bots with names suggesting affiliation with UK cities, presently automated via a combination of IFTTT (Guardian articles) and fllwrs (spammy follow/unfollow tracking) apps. None of their 2020 content has anything to do with private detectives.
Each of these accounts has a link to an associated website on its profile. These websites theoretically belong to private detective agencies in various UK cities, but the English is incoherent enough at points that it's hard to tell what services are supposedly being offered.
Although this botnet currently only tweets news links and follower tracking spam, during 2014-2015 it did promote the same websites that are linked on the account profiles, as well as other detective-themed tweets, mostly via Hootsuite.
One more thing: the "private detective" schtick does not appear to be this botnet's original theme, based on its oldest tweets (2011-2012), which have nothing to do with detective agencies. At least some (and likely all) of the accounts were renamed to fit the detective theme.
