OK, of course there’s spam on Twitter! It’s like air pollution: it’s everywhere.
This morning I discovered I had a new ‘friend’: The Bachelor Guy (thebachelorguy) added you as a friend!
I visited his page and immediately saw a list of tweets about women and their sexual practices, gambling, products for sale. You’ll know exactly what’s in there if you’ve ever opened a spam email or looked at comment spam on a blog.
Time for action: I visit my Twitter home page, click on my list of 11 ‘friends’, scroll down past the ten I already know about: each has a picture and some links beside their name (for leaving them, direct messaging and so on). Then there’s a suspicious empty space where ‘friend’ number 11 should be listed.
Even when I view the HTML, there’s no number 11.
On reading the Twitter FAQ there is mention of spammers:
Can I block spammers and other unsavory characters?
Yes. At the bottom of the right hand sidebar on every profile page, there is a block link. Read more about this here. If it’s a spammer you’re blocking, feel free to send us a heads up, always much appreciated!
Ah, I go to thebachelorguy’s Profile Page and click the ‘block’ link at the bottom.
So: he’s blocked, and I contacted Twitter to tell them he’s a spammer.
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That is definitely the MO of Twitter spammers. They make you a friend so you check them out. If you don’t look carefully, you might just add them as one of your friends — so their Spam gets delivered to your computer or other devices.
I check out all my new “friends.” Some of them are borderline spammers. The majority of their tweets are self-promotional. One of them was pretty crafty — she set up multiple Twitter accounts and used all of them to become my friend on the same day. It was pretty easy to spot since the one account I did make a friend kept promoting the tweets of the other two accounts. Sheesh!
If I start getting messages that are either too weird or too self-promotional, I just delete them from my list of friends.
Blocking them from seeing your tweets probably doesn’t matter. The true spammers — like the one you found — probably don’t look at the tweets from friends.
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