Let’s fight Spam on Twitter!
Posted under: It is getting out of hand: Phishing DMs from one side, the so called Britney-Bots and the new Asshley-Bots invading the mentions of all users from the other. We all have experienced it, we all have suffered from it and we all know people whom we trust that have been caught on it: Yes everyone can be a victim of these attacks.
Twitter’s teams might be doing heavy work to fight and prevent spam (I believe it!) but its not communicating with us, users, letting us know what is going on. I sometimes think that Twitter’s founders have no idea of what a simple tweet coming from one of them could do in terms of communication. Something along the lines “Also getting spam on my mentions and, believe me, I like it is as much as you do. We are on it but we need your help: example url” from @Jack, @ev or @biz pointing to a blog entry, where best practices to report spam and fight spam were detailed, could make wonders: Fighting spam could be turned into a global community effort.
The fact is that at this moment fighting spam is not something everyone is doing.
Some users only complain about it:
Others joke about it (#meaculpa)
but few users do the right thing.
I believe that fighting spam is the responsibility of all of us and we should take it seriously. If we all do it, maybe we can turn this battle around into our favor and Twitter will join us in a more visible way.
But the main question is, of course, how to fight spam on Twitter?
- Always report spam to Twitter: You can do this by sending a DM to @spam with several usernames that are spamming you. If @spam is not following you just sent it a Tweet.
- Applications like TweetDeck and others allow you to this directly. Always do it.
- Check your new followers: Go through your followers list often (once a day, twice a day, how many you see fit) and report those that you see are spam
- To do this you can you use the Block and Report to Spam option on the drop down menu
- In case of doubt check the user’s time line, see the ratio of followers vs. following, look for what kind of Tweets are sent: If you see “Sent from API” you probably found a spammer.
- Change your password often: This applies not only to twitter but to your online life. Yes, it is a drag but way better than to get your account(s) phished.
- Check your connections often: You can find them on your twitter.com page under “Settings“.
- What Twitter calls Connections are the applications you have authorized to use your account and send tweets on your behalf. Most of the spam DMs afflicting Twitter happen via this method. If you see any application that you are not familiar with or remember authorizing click on the Revoke Access option.
- Be carefull: Always make sure you are logging in at the twitter.com home page.
- Don’t RT content before checking it: This is very important! Unless it comes from sources you trust don’t RT before you check it. With every RT something good, or something bad, is reaching more users. You can stop spread something bad in the same way you can help spread something good.
I hope that these guidelines can help all of us in trying to fight spam in a effective way. If you think that I missed something please don’t hesitate to leave it in the comments.
LET THE HUNT BEGIN!
Picture Credits: Polina Sergeeva under a CC License