1) Use Tweetdeck
2) Type this a lot: #
3) Block spammers
Spammers on Twitter are pushing links. They can’t make money from you on Twitter, so they want to get you somewhere that they can. They want to maximize the number of people they reach, and maximize the percentage of those reached who click on the link.
Spam-bots listen for keywords, or listen to hashtags, or do user searches presumably from other users. When they see your name pop up because you mentioned a word they listen for, or a hashtag, or they ransacked a friend list for you, then they target you. They cannot direct message (DM) you, because you are not “following” them. So they will embed your name in a tweet, and your own built-in channel for monitoring menions of yourself will pick it up. You have just been spammed.
At this point, you have a choice: befriend/respond/click (fail), do nothing (pass), block and report (#winning!). Whatever it is, the key is not to avoid certain topics or hashtags; that’s appeasement. The key is to ruthlessly BLACK AND REPORT these dirtbags. But how can you tell who is spamming you?
These are all spam.
These are not the boobies you are looking for
The middle one (Kathie-whatever) is the easiest type of stealth-spammer to spot. The egg icon means that no image has been uploaded–on Twitter we all start out as eggs. The multiple names look as if it could be a person trying to pul their Tweet-peeps together, in the vein of “Hey, all of you people have something in common, namely me, and I’d like to introduce you”, which is fine. I have no issue with this, as this is what #FF (Follow Friday) is all about anyway. Some hate it, some love it, but it’s not really spam.
Any time you see that egg, you should consider it spam unless you are given reason to suspect it’s ok. If you still sport an egg icon, and yet you are far enough along to read about blocking spammers, it’s time you got an icon. Anything but the egg.
The real give-away here is that this Twitter account has no icon and has only one follower (and so is guaranteed new), yet is posting names of multiple Tweeple, and almost hidden at the end is a link.
The bottom tweet pictured is not hard to suss. It is very similar to the middle one, but has a bit less text stuffed into the body of the post, and has boobies. That’s right, I said it. This icon will make you look, and if you already don’t know what you’re doing on Twitter, you;re going to click. This is one of the incontestable truths uncovered since scientific investigation of the internet was started: people click on boobies.
Luckily, we have an antidote to this powerful mojo, and that is just the application of a little common sense: If you are excited to see seven-pixel boobies on a micro-messaging SMS derivative, then nobody is sending you boobies. Get over it, click Block & Report, and get out of the basement. Meet some real people.
That brings us to the final spam tweet, the top on in the illustration. Could be a real person, eh? Nothing suspect about the photo, not shot-gunned to a bunch of people I never heard of… link looks a little sketchy. I’ll just click on thi–oh wait. Two followers? No way this is real.
Profile:
[table id=1 /]
