Ways To Spot A Twitter Spammer:

Receiving a new follower on Twitter, especially when you first sign up, can be quite flattering.

But how do you know if that new fan is just a spammer?

Here’s 4 very simple tips for spotting a Twitter spammer -

1. Their profile picture is a young girl (usually blonde) and typically showing a rather generous amount of cleavage.
2. Even though the user is newly registered, they are following hundreds of people and have very few followers themselves.
3. Their user name is complete gibberish – typically a weird and random collection of letters and numbers.
4. They link to a website through a URL-shortening service, such as Tinyurl, in order to disguise where potential visitors may be headed.

Can you think of any other means to spot a Twitter spammer?

UPDATE

As always, Twitter itself is a great place for receiving feedback, so here’s a few more suggestions :

5. Generally, they will have made very few posts. Perhaps only one or two, because they want to push you towards a particular URL

6. Also, there is an impersonation trend where the spammer pretends to be a well known online guru.

7. The spammer will basically clone the original profile, and simply use a bogus middle initial for the username.e.g. britneymspears

8. Their description is something like “I’m earning 10,000 from home” or similar