TWITTER HAS FILED a lawsuit in a US court against five websites that create tools designed to distribute spam across the social network.

In a statement on its blog, the company said it is targeting the so-called spambots which send automated tweets to real users.

“With this [law] suit, we’re going straight to the source,” the statement said.

Regular users have often complained to the company about the high volume of spam, often triggered by using words such as ‘iPad’, ‘diet’, ‘debt’ and ‘Justin Bieber’ in tweets.

The company acknowledged what many users already know: as it has grown bigger, it has become a far more attractive target for spammers.

“Our engineers continue to combat spammers’ efforts to circumvent our safeguards, and today we’re adding another weapon to our arsenal: the law,” the statement said.

Twitter described the law suit against the websites which create spambots as “an important step forward”.

We are committed to fighting spam on all fronts, by continuing to grow our anti-spam team and using every tool at our disposal to shut down spammers.

The statement added:

This morning, we filed suit in federal court in San Francisco against five of the most aggressive tool providers and spammers. With this suit, we’re going straight to the source. By shutting down tool providers, we will prevent other spammers from having these services at their disposal. Further, we hope the suit acts as a deterrent to other spammers, demonstrating the strength of our commitment to keep them off Twitter.

The social network has 140 million active users with more than 340 million tweets sent every day.

The Guardian reports that the defendants listed in the suit filed in a court in San Francisco are TweetAttacks, TweetAdder, TweetBuddy, James Lucero of justinlover.info and Garland E Harris of troption.com.

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