Fighting Twitter Spam (With a Little Help From My Friends)

Brian Wallace — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 02:30:59 +0000

If Twitter is good for one thing, it is support from the community. Our fine city of Louisville has been in a state of emergency and the total number of people without power in Kentucky has skyrocketed to over 1 million.

And of course spammers picked this fine time to make a copycat account. Underscore spammers have been hitting several top Twitter users, and its getting ridiculous.

Hmm, this guy looks familiar, but…

In light of the outpouring of support shown by my friends on event of this spammer rearing his ugly head, here are some steps to report spam on Twitter:

1 – Follow the @spam account. @spam is an account maintained by Twitter for keeping track of spam reports. And hey, you’ll also get a free follower!

2 – Reply to the @spam account. @spam suggests that you use the following format when reporting spam: @spam @name of twitter account

3 – DM the @spam account. If you are concerned about your privacy or simply don’t want to fill the twitter stream

4 – Write a blog post embroiling the snotty little spammer. Well folks, you’re reading this one right now

5 – Tell your friends! Tweet, IM and email back all your friends that are looking out for you. Explain to new user friends that this is a spammer trying to take advantage of your good name.

6 – Block the offending user. ‘Nuff said.

7 – Wait patiently for the Twitter staff to do their thing. Watch your twitter spammer friend (hopefully) become a flame broiled Twitter Owl:

How do you deal with Twitter spam? Does it make you want to be on Twitter any less? Let me know.

Update: @_nowsourcing is officially toast! Thanks to all that helped bring it down.

NowSourcing.Com » city of louisville

Fighting Twitter Spam (With a Little Help From My Friends)