I recently jumped on the Twitter microblogging bandwagon, as part of my gradual attempt to reconnect with technology that I’ve shunned ever since committing my studies to medicine. I’ve been content with my progress. So far, I’ve been tweaking the website’s inner workings to make it SEO friendly, and tightening up some security interfaces.

Twitter is a welcome beast useful for obtaining links to other websites that incorporate technology and medicine. I grin in triumph when Twitter notifies me of a new follower, which has been happening frequently. Is it a product of the sweat I put into this website? Perhaps… That is, until I discovered Twitter spam.

Yes, Twitter spam. Just when email users thought spam was under control, spam comments on blogs began rampant. Now there is Twitter spam. It’s disgusting. From what I understand, spam bots seek out Twitterers (is that a word?) and mass-market their products. They “follow” the victim, who receives an email from Twitter–this only happens if the email option is enabled. The victim then views the spam box’s Twitter page and clicks on its link, which usually leads to a banner ad or product page.

So much for fame and glory. My viewers are simply spammers. There are some ways to pare down these spammers. (1) You can disable email notification or filter out these notifications from your email. (2) Find a cleaner like Twerpscan. It peruses your loyal followers’ profiles, and helps identify those bots. There are other available services online, but this has worked for me. Twerpscan simply flags those Twitter accounts that seem to be following a disproportionately high number of people. You can then block them from your list. Yes, it’s crude and may have low specificity, but it works especially if you have a small list to begin with. Twitter has also been working on an internal fix to block these clogs that bog down the web. Good luck.  And if you’re a real live person out there, find me on twitter!

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