Twitter Spam is Becoming More of a Problem
MailCleaner is a cutting-edge product that protects our clients from spam in their email inboxes, but there are many other types of spam to contend with out there. An increasingly troublesome type of spam that Internet users have to deal with takes place on social media platforms. Twitter, in particular, has received a fair amount of criticism for the amount of spam that users have to put up with.
Given the dynamic, constantly renewing nature of your Twitter feed, eliminating spam ends up being more of a challenge. Twitter spam is by no means a new thing, but it has definitely become more of a problem in recent history. In this article, we’re going to take a closer look at this spam phenomenon and offer some advice on how to deal with it.
How Twitter Spam Works
A great deal of the spam that appears in your Twitter feed is perpetrated by spam bots. These are essentially small computer programs that operate under the guise of a regular Twitter account. These bots cruise the Twittersphere, liking tweets along the way.
Every time a spam bot likes a tweet, the user who posted it will receive a notification letting them know that someone is taking notice of one of their posts. This, in turn, stirs the user’s curiosity. They want to know who it is that is liking their tweets.
When curiosity gets the best of the user, they’ll click on the notification to visit the profile of the person who liked their tweet. The profile they end up visiting is plagued with spam. It may include a pinned link to a pornography site, or a link that – when clicked – downloads malware onto their computer.
Twitter Spam Bots Sometimes Hijack Real Twitter Accounts
While this is certainly not always the case, it appears that some twitter bots are able to successfully hijack other user’s accounts. This adds credibility to their spam efforts, since the account has a history and appears to be genuine.
If you come across any form of spam on Twitter, it’s important that you flag it as such. This helps the admins keep up with blocking spam accounts.The more people that join together and flag spam, the safer the Twittersphere is going to be for everyone. It really does need to be a community effort.
How to Protect Yourself from Spam on Twitter
There are a few steps you can take to protect yourself from Twitter. We’ll go over a few below:
- Don’t click on links found on profiles that look in any way suspicious.
- If you don’t know why a particular (unknown) user is taking interest in your tweets, refrain from following any links on their profile.
- Switch off the auto-follow feature so that you don’t automatically see spammers’ tweets once they’ve started following you.
- Actively block obvious spammers to keep them out of your feed.
Finally, you may also want to consider opting out of some of the direct-message mailing lists. Many of these campaigns are organised through SocialOomph, and opting out is easy.