Yesterday I wrote a post highlighting the issues I’ve been having with DM spam with Twitter. I sent an email to Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, and then discovered something that is epically wrong.

Biz asked in his email whether I’d given access to the spammers before they sent the message. Since I’ve since discovered, they can’t send DM’s if you haven’t already followed them.

Here’s the thing: I hadn’t followed any of them, and yet when I followed through to EVERY spammers account Twitter was showing that I’d followed them. I can say with 110% certainty that I hadn’t, so what gives?

There are two possibilities. The more likely one is that a third party Twitter service I’ve used offered my login details to the spammers/ spamming service in question. The less likely option is that my Twitter account was hacked. As a precaution I’ve reset my Twitter email to something very obscure.

Given that I don’t think my account was hacked (it’s very unlikely) the question is which Twitter third party service gave over my details? Today I’m offering a starting rate of $100 to the person or company that answers that question.

The starting rate is on these terms: I know when I put that spam post up here and on Twitter that I’m far from alone in the Twitter DM spam issue, and this is where I need your help. Even if it’s $5, I’m looking for those affected like I have been to commit to the solution. The more pledges we gather, the better chance someone will solve it for us.

Please leave your name, website, and pledge amount in the comments. Together we can put a stop to this problem by identifying the third party service who is giving our details to spammers. If you’re interested in the reward, email me at duncan at nichenet.com.au. Let’s try for a Sunday cut off for pledges, and we can go from there. I’ll be emailing all the details to Twitter as well so once we identify the bad company and hopefully they can cut them off.