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3 Steps To Stop Spammers On Twitter

July 22, 2009 in Twitter with 84 Comments

spammerSpam on Twitter has been on my mind a lot lately.  It could be the influx of unwanted replies that I talked about earlier, or the very positive actions by the Twitter team yesterday to purge known accounts, or the constant stream of “get more followers today” that I see. No matter, spam on Twitter is only going to get worse before it (hopefully) gets better.  Anywhere people gather electronically, unscrupulous marketers will find a way to put get rich schemes or magic blue pills that promise a lifetime of pleasure information in front of us against our will.  Spam isn’t just for email anymore.

We can work as a community to help slow its advance however, and I want to tell you the very simple way I do my part and ask you to do the same with just a couple of easy steps.

How To Quickly And Easily Slow Down Spam

  1. Help Fight Spam On Twitter

    Help Fight Spam On Twitter

    Download and use Tweetdeck. I’ve talked about this great Adobe Air app a couple of times, and I have it open pretty much all day long.  You’ll need it for this very specific task, so go get it here.

  2. Find the spammers. Use the filter button at the bottom of the “All Friends” column, it’s the funny looking one that appears to be an arrow pointing at two balls. Type in the word you want to filter for, in this case I selected “followers” because I see a lot of posts that say “I became a member of this AWESOME site that gets you TONS of followers”. This filter will include anybody that says “followers” so proceed with caution.  I usually click on their profile, and 90% of the time it’s the same message over and over and over again.  SPAM!
  3. Block and report them! Mouse over the avatar and four icons will appear; select the one that looks like a snowflake in the lower right corner, then choose User–>Block & Report Spam.  This will remove this person from your timeline and then send a direct message to @spam that the user should be suspended.  One click, two actions!  I don’t know the algorithm used by Twitter, but I’m guessing when a certain number of people report an account it is automatically suspended pending investigation.

That’s it!  I see a lot of these types of spammers show up in my stream because I occasionally (but not always) turn on auto-following so that I can reciprocate for those that follow me.  Why I do this is a subject for another post, but unfortunately that method gets the bad with the good.  It should also be noted that you can block people on their individual Twitter pages, and you can report spam by sending an @ or DM to the spam account, but I find this method quick and easy.

If you have any tips or tricks for getting rid of spam, I would love to here them! Send me an @ or leave a note in the comments.

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About Matt Singley: I run this joint. Always looking for feedback, and if there is something you want me to write about, just let me know! Thanks for stopping by.


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84 Responses to “3 Steps To Stop Spammers On Twitter”

  1. Matt Singley July 25, 2009 at 9:36 am #

    Hey Tyler, thanks for putting me in with Randy Alcorn and that wedding video! That’s the first time I’ve seen that, very cool.

    This comment was originally posted on http://manofdepravity.com/)“>man.of.depravity

  2. Matt Singley July 25, 2009 at 9:36 am #

    Hey Tyler, thanks for putting me in with Randy Alcorn at that wedding video! That’s the first time I’ve seen that, very cool.

    This comment was originally posted on http://manofdepravity.com/)“>man.of.depravity

  3. Matt Singley July 25, 2009 at 9:36 am #

    Hey Tyler, thanks for putting me in with Randy Alcorn and that wedding video! That’s the first time I’ve seen that, very cool.

    This comment was originally posted on man.of.depravity

  4. Matt Singley July 25, 2009 at 9:36 am #

    Hey Tyler, thanks for putting me in with Randy Alcorn at that wedding video! That’s the first time I’ve seen that, very cool.

    This comment was originally posted on man.of.depravity

  5. ash July 25, 2009 at 7:35 pm #

    on Kings (which I actually think is a dynamic show)- I agree that NBC failed and it’s sad that they don’t want to attract new audiences esp when a series of the shows they’ve had …don’t do well, are forgotten, etc. Of course, I actually have an alternate opinion on the rating system in general which I very recently blogged about (tell what you think)

    Henri Nouwen- def. an incredible author- and interesting Priest, I’ve read a couple of his books- and the one I loved the most was “The Return of the Prodigal Son,” …where he really goes after the fact that we all end up like one of the brothers, but are called to be like the Father in that story. Good stuff.

    The Homeless Lobbyist is an interesting story. In essence, it’s giving them an opportunity and that can be an incredible thing. On the other hand- if they’re just being used- then motives are misplaced, and on a humanitarian level, that’s terrible.

    This comment was originally posted on http://manofdepravity.com/)“>man.of.depravity

  6. ash July 25, 2009 at 7:35 pm #

    on Kings (which I actually think is a dynamic show)- I agree that NBC failed and it’s sad that they don’t want to attract new audiences esp when a series of the shows they’ve had …don’t do well, are forgotten, etc. Of course, I actually have an alternate opinion on the rating system in general which I very recently blogged about (tell what you think)

    Henri Nouwen- def. an incredible author- and interesting Priest, I’ve read a couple of his books- and the one I loved the most was “The Return of the Prodigal Son,” …where he really goes after the fact that we all end up like one of the brothers, but are called to be like the Father in that story. Good stuff.

    The Homeless Lobbyist is an interesting story. In essence, it’s giving them an opportunity and that can be an incredible thing. On the other hand- if they’re just being used- then motives are misplaced, and on a humanitarian level, that’s terrible.

    This comment was originally posted on man.of.depravity

  7. Tyler July 25, 2009 at 7:42 pm #

    I think we agree on every point Ash. This is a great day

    This comment was originally posted on http://manofdepravity.com/)“>man.of.depravity

  8. Tyler July 25, 2009 at 7:42 pm #

    I think we agree on every point Ash. This is a great day

    This comment was originally posted on man.of.depravity

  9. Jimmy Rogers July 30, 2009 at 11:45 am #

    I kind of disagree with the last one. Locking your account, in my experience, does more to insulate users from the benefits of Twitter than protect them from whoever they are locking themselves away from. People should simply be conscious of what they post or not twitter at all!

    This comment was originally posted on ultimate geek girl

  10. Ellie July 31, 2009 at 2:37 am #

    Good point, Jimmy! However, I think that we shouldn’t have to censor ourselves in order to stop spammers from targeting keywords we post and mass following us. That, too, defeats the purpose of Twitter.

    (And congrats on being the 1000th comment!)

    This comment was originally posted on ultimate geek girl

  11. Technology Blog August 7, 2009 at 10:38 pm #

    Now I could easily kick spammers out of my twitter account.BTW What is your twitter ID?

    Thanks again

    This comment was originally posted on ultimate geek girl

  12. Ellie August 8, 2009 at 5:58 am #

    I’m @thepinkc on Twitter.

    This comment was originally posted on ultimate geek girl

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