Twitter Search Encourages Unwanted Followers?
As many of you might be knowing, Twitter provides a search function to find your friends easily over its vast user base and also provides you the functionality to search for email accounts to find out if any of your contacts are on Twitter.
Though this service is extremely useful, however it can also get your account spammed with unwanted followers.
But How?
What happens is that whenever you search for certain names in Twitter search, the search activity is logged by other Twitter bots. The spammers then through these search activity, based on the topic they are looking for, get themselves to follow you and over a period of time may or may not attract other similar followers.
For example:
I searched for webhosting and within a day of searching this name, I was being followed by the people interested in webhosting ( I presume spammers ) and started getting replies for free web hosts.
Block Spam!
Now that you know you are being followed by these spammer, you might want to get rid of them. This can be easily done by simply blocking them and restricting their access to your account by enabling ‘Protect My Updates’ in Settings tab.
Many of you might also be thinking at the back of your mind -
” Why the heck would you want to remove a follower ? ”
And my answer is WHY NOT?
- I don’t think increasing your followers count with such spammers would do any good to you. What’s the point of having 2359 followers, out of which 1500 are spammers!
- Secondly, you would only be encouraging spam.
Having said that, I would like to add that this was my personal experience and have no idea whether any of you have faced such a situation before!
[Editor's Note: This post is submitted by our guest blogger Paritosh, the author of Techvorm.
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Harsh Agr... (34)
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saorabh (9)
I never used twitter search unless it is major headline like PR update ,you can use Twoogle,twootle without even logging into your twitter accounts.
@Venkat The services you mentioned, no doubt provides better functions. However if ever you use the default search be carefull !
Why you want to block followers??
Let them follow, at least follower count moves you up in Tweeps list on Twitterholic from a region
yes more followers means more business
@Prashanth
@Alok Guys as i said above in the post, you shouldnt encourage spammers and how to you expect to get more business out of such spammers ? There are here only to promote themselves or THEIR products.
@paritosh
I don’t understand what *YOU* loose by allowing them to follow you!!? Until unless you follow them back, you will never get spammed by them.
You actually gain more positions in Twitter user directories like Twitterholic! Whether you block them or not, it doesn’t really make a difference for them. They will be still there.
If you are not aware of TwitterHolic, check this page for top 100 Tweeps in Bangalore http://twitterholic.com/top100/followers/bylocation/Bangalore/
@Prashanth Every individual has a different opinion. I said what i wanted to and i completely respect your point of view.