You never really know someone... especially online.
When I ‘meet’ someone on Twitter, the new relationship starts out with a certain level of trust. I am careful about those I ‘friend’ or ‘follow’ online and by the time I’ve returned a friend or follow request I have established that a person is trustworthy. By careful, I mean I spend some time in the profile before I automatically follow the person back.
These are 10 steps I take to protect my Twitter account:
1. View the friend:follower ratio – It has to be somewhat even, unless it’s @badbanana, @theonion or even Justin.
2. Read the Bio and the URL – Is it believable? Is this a real person or someone looking to ‘collect’ me like a stamp?
3. Look at the tweet count - If the person has 1K + followers and only tweeted 100 times, there’s a problem.
4. Read the tweets – Are there any conversations (@replies) with people?
5. Take the time to glance over the following/follower lists – Does this person follow other spammers? Or does this person follow other people in my fields of interest?
6. Once I’ve decided to follow someone, I will unfollow immediately if I receive any kind of ‘click my junk’ DM. TIP: I’m not fond of ‘Thanks for following’ DM’s either.
7. I block scammers and spammers regularly. This is the reason my Twitter follow and follower counts are still fairly low.
8. On occasion I protect my updates and spend some time removing followers. This is less than a ‘block’… it’s just saying I’m really not interested in them following me.
9. I report scammers and spammers to @Spam often. We need to work together as a group to get rid of these people.
10. I’ve stopped clicking on links within DM’s. It’s not that I don’t trust my friends, it’s more about the lack of Twitter security. If you receive a tweet from me that says “please confirm this link is real by sending me an @reply”, please don’t be offended.
I hope these 10 Tricks will keep you safe while Tweeting! Do you have any tips or tricks to share?
Happy Halloween everyone! I hope it’s spooooky!
