We’ve seen a pair of Twitter accounts which sport MTV logos and are playing a part in trying to make people think a life of fame and fortune await in the world of music videos.
Here’s the first, which looks a little bit…uninformative?
While all of those Tweets appear to be nonsense, filter the account to “Tweets and Replies” and you’ll see something else – namely, lots of spammy posts directed at other Twitter users:
What we likely have here is a bot picking out mentions of various music stars then sending these responses:
“We are filming Drake’s new video and they have chosen u you to be in it! Go here”“We’re making Pharrell’s new video and they picked u you to be in it! Go here”
“We are filming Ariana Grande’s next video and they picked you you to be in it Go here”
There are lots like the below example, where someone only had to link a YouTube video to warrant a response from the Twitter feed:
The Tweets direct them to another account, @castingyounow:
The bio for that account reads as follows:
“One of the hottest artists on the planet has chosen you to be in their next video! Proceed to the link above to confirm and we will contact you shortlyFOLLOW THIS LINK
bit(dot)ly/[url]”
The link will bounce anybody clicking it through a series of URLs, some of which are used for stats / click analysis:
bit(dot)ly/1nUIw7u (shortened redirection link with 9,317 clicks) goo(dot)gl/RYZusj (shortened redirection link with 10,431 clicks. 5,000+ were from iPhone devices with Windows having just over 2,000, and 4,500+ clicks came from the US) urcasted(dot)info tpmrotator(dot)com/rotate2.php?id=21557&rotator=xtra (a service which lets registered users display multiple sites under one URL)
Eventually, they’ll land at the following sign-up page for a site which is all about “casting movie extras”.
While you may (or may not) land a movie extras role via that website, the posts being made to Twitter are clearly auto-replying to celebrity mentions and should be ignored. One spammy Twitter feed bearing an MTV logo is not going to result in a dance off with J.Lo anytime soon.
Christopher Boyd
