Toyota facebook page spammed
Pornographic spambot forces manufacturer to block commenting on social media siteSocial media sites have become a tool of inestimable value in the effective marketing of a company's product range, but every once in a while things fail to go according to plan.
Take for example Toyota's run-in with a spambot on its Facebook page over the weekend. The sudden appearance of explicit material placed the company in an embarrassing situation requiring an immediate remedy.
"There was an inappropriate spambot that has been targeting Facebook communities," a Toyota spokesperson told motoring.com.au yesterday. "It's pornographic material... we were the target of that over the weekend."
The company made the decision to close down the public commenting facility while Toyota's social media people worked with Facebook to resolve the issue. Although the Facebook page itself remains active and the general public can still contact Toyota by private message, the public commenting is blocked for a period Toyota hopes will not exceed 48 hours.
According to the spokesperson Toyota prides itself on providing a safe environment for users of all ages and the explicit nature of the pornographic material conflicted with that basic tenet.
"It's the open area, which anyone can see, where this spam [bot] has started targeting," the spokesperson said. "Facebook doesn't have a security filter for that type of thing — and because they're not putting profanity in the post, it's just a photo, it's hard for the system to automatically block that type of content."
The statement Toyota left on the site, explaining the problem, is as follows:
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