Tag Archives: Fake Followers

The Twitter Zone

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Just as we discussed previously in Tech4Boomer’s Post, “Digital Olympics”, nowadays
it’s as though there is a Technology Olympics going on.  What I mean is that the  “rate of change” is astounding.  As a matter of fact, you should receive a  Gold Medal if you can keep up with what’s happening with Social Media.  Just when you think that you have achieved a happy, and somewhat dynamic  equilibrium,  grasping the changes  occurring within the social media phenomenon, e.g., Apps, Foursquare, Google Earth, chatting with friends, and followers (are they bots?) etc., you come to find out that actually it has changed again, and you have just entered another dimension:

“The Twitter Zone”.

I had a fortunate reading experience with an article written by Andy O’Donnell at About.com Guide. The article, which is about Twitter, not only introduced me to terminology I had never encountered, it also brought to my attention the importance of periodically checking who is following you on Twitter.

These are some of the topics that O’Donnell  covers in the article:

  1. How to use Status People’s Fake Follower check to see what percentage of your followers are fake, real, or inactive.
  2. How to report followers for SPAM and what happens when you do.
  3. Malicious Twitter bots, which are used to spread links to malware, and how they are often disguised as shortened links.
  4. The importance of checking whether some of your followers are legitimate. Sometimes you can just check if they have any followers.
  5. How to protect your Tweets by putting restrictions in place. Of course in this case you will also have to ‘approve’ each ‘follow’ request. In addition, your tweets will only be seen to those you have approved.
  6. How to Block other Twitter followers.

Use these links to check out the guidelines and get  some of the details of various things you should know about and take action on:

Glossary:
Twitter Bots – In addition to spammers, hackers and internet criminals may send out malicious Twitter bots5 to follow you. Malicious bots are used to spread links to malware which are often disguised as shortened links6 so that the malicious link itself is obscured from view by the shortened link. http://netsecurity.about.com/od/informationresources/a/How-To-Prevent-Strangers-From-Following-You-On-Twitter.htm?p=1

SPAM and SPIM bots
These bots bombard your inbox with SPAM and interrupt your chats by sending you unsolicited instant messages (SPIM). http://netsecurity.about.com/od/advancedsecurity/a/Malicious-Bots.htm

PUBLIC & PROTECTED TWEETS https://support.twitter.com/articles/14016-about-public-and-protected-tweets#

Are all bots bad?  So, now we know how to recognize them. But there is another issue. Is it bad to follow a bot? It might be, if it’s a bot that tricks you into buying things you didn’t want in the first place, or if you think you are really dealing with a person. But maybe not always. via How to recognize Twitter bots: 7 signals to look out for.

Help

Read the entire Andy O’Donnell article using this link:
http://netsecurity.about.com/od/informationresources/a/How-To-Prevent-Strangers-From-Following-You-On-Twitter.htm?p=1