If you're among the millions of early dabblers on Google+, you have probably picked up on an undercurrent of concern there that once the new social network is opened to commercial interests - they're officially taboo, so far -- spammers are sure to rush the doors, too.
Well, an Australian programmer, Robert Norris Hills, says he has demonstrated the ease with which spammers may operate in Google+ by fashioning a bot capable of "circling" some 2,500 Google+ accounts per hour, and a three-minute YouTube video showing the thing in action. (To "circle" on Google+ is equivalent to "following" on Twitter or "friending" on Facebook.)
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At the start of the video, a message from Hills reads: "Dear friends @Google: I am worried that this is going to be a significant problem. If a spaghetti programmer like me can do this, spam is going to be off the rails when you go live (with commercial accounts.) ... So, yes, it's a bot to add people to circles. ... I hope you address this issue." (The video is set to music, so feel free to mute unless you're a fan of Incubus.)
There are some things I don't know about this video, beginning with the question of whether what it depicts is real or not. One commenter on Google+ called it a "fake," although his was the only suspicion raised among early viewers and my own was not.
Also, my own Google+ account was among the 4,000-plus apparently circled by the bot, which meant that Hill's Google+ post and video appeared in my "incoming" stream, a repository for content sent by people (or bots) who have circled me on Google+ but I have not yet circled back. It's not difficult to imagine that area becoming spam-infested.
Hill labeled the video "A certain shade of Scoble - G+ hack," which was meant to buttress his general point by noting that the bot was able to circle in less than two hours roughly the same number of accounts that social-media maven and Google+ power user Rober Scoble has accumulated since the site launched June 29.
Google+ circling would seem to need quantity limits, be they hourly or total, although a couple of commenters offered that any countermeasures would prove futile.
Over time, it will be interesting to see if Google+ is any better at combating the scourge of spam than the rest of the Internet has been.
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