(This is one of my most popular posts. I updated it on August 25, 2011.)
There have been increasing incidents of spam being sent through direct messages (DMs) in Twitter. Spam, in this particular case with Twitter, means messages that are not sent by individuals, but by bots (computer programs) either acting on behalf of a user or using a Twitter account that’s been hacked. There are a few things you can do to protect yourself from DM spam.
Avoiding DM Spam is Easy
Firstly, if you’re currently using auto-follow on Twitter, STOP. You can only receive DMs from people you follow. If you auto-follow, you’re begging for DM spam. Manually vet every person you follow on Twitter. This will really help keep down the DM spam. And really, Twitter is not about how many followers you have, it’s about who you follow and interact with.
Security First
Be very careful about which services you connect your Twitter account to. These services can post on your behalf, so be very sure you know what each service will and won’t do. You can check (and remove, if you want) which services your Twitter account is connected to by clicking here: https://twitter.com/settings/applications. Mafia Wars and Disqus are two examples of services you can connect your Twitter account to.
Use a secure password. Never use a simple password like ‘purple22’ or, worse, just ‘purple’ or any other word that can be found in the dictionary for any of your internet accounts. Mix it up with capital letters and, even better, symbols like ~!@#%& and so on. I highly recommend this PC World article on using secure passwords.
When you receive a DM spam message, use Twitter’s ‘Report Spam’ feature.
How effective are these steps? I’ll let you be the judge: I’ve been using Twitter since January 2009. I am currently followed by over 1700 people. I follow about 60% of them back, plus a lot more that don’t follow me. I receive maybe one DM spam message per month.
Do you have any other tips to add? Drop me a comment.