San Francisco, April 6 (UPI)--
Twitter says it has filed lawsuits against several companies it says are the worst offenders flooding the system with spam tweets.
Twitter filed suits in a San Fransisco federal court against the companies behind TweetAttacks, TweetAdder and TweetBuddy, as well as James Lucero of Justinlover.info and Garland Harris of Troption.com, TG Daily reported Friday.
Twitter alleges the companies have been engaging in activities ranging from offering spam broadcasting software to falsely promising to increase followers for user's accounts.
"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," Twitter said on the company blog.
"Further, we hope the suit acts as a deterrent to other spammers, demonstrating the strength of our commitment to keep them off Twitter."
Twitter said it had to spend a total of over $700,000 on anti-spam measures as a result of the defendants' activities, and is seeking monetary damages.
"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," Twitter said.