Security News > 2020 > May > NortonLifeLock Releases Free Tool for Detecting Bots on Twitter
NortonLifeLock this week released the beta version of a free browser extension that allows Twitter users to easily identify bots on the social media platform.
BotSight was created by the NortonLifeLock Research Group, formerly known as Symantec Research Labs - the NortonLifeLock brand was created after Symantec sold its enterprise security unit and Symantec brand to Broadcom for $10.7 billion.
NortonLifeLock says BotSight, which it describes as a research prototype, uses a machine learning model to detect Twitter bots with a high degree of accuracy, including in tweets displayed in the user's timeline, search and trending topics.
The company has so far analyzed more than 100,000 accounts and found that roughly 5% of tweets are posted by bots.
"In our analysis of recent coronavirus-related tweets, we found that between 6-18% of users tweeting on this subject were bots, depending on which time period we sampled, while a random sample of the Twitter stream indicates 4-8% bot activity by volume over the same time period. This contrast shows that bots are strategic about their behaviour: favoring current events to maximize their impact," said Daniel Kats, principal researcher at the NortonLifeLock Research Group.