How to Have a Spam Free, Porn Free Twitter Experience

Is there anyone out there who actually likes spam? It's the bane of the internet, and it invades your email inbox, your social profiles, and now, your Twitter followers. Basically, any new technology that comes along, spammers will try to find a way to make it work for them.

But there are ways to beat them. Below, you'll find out how to beat them using Twitter's already existing tools. Getting rid of spammers will take a small amount of effort on your part, but it's worth it! Following a few simple rules is all it takes.

Rule Number One: Never, ever auto-follow!

Do not auto-follow, either using technology or by hand. Just because someone decides to follow you, does not mean that you have to follow them! Instead of automatically following them, take a look at their previous posts. Are they posts you find interesting? Is this information you want to see in your Twitter feed? If not, don't follow.

Rule Number Two: Report Spammers to Twitter

If you receive a tweet from someone you don't follow, and it's any kind of marketing, report that username to Twitter's Spam Watch account. To do this, you can follow @spam and when you get one of those spammy messages, make an update that says: d spam username. The d before "spam" means you're sending a direct message to "spam". The username you put after that should be the username of the spammer you're reporting. If, for some reason, you're unable to send a direct message, you can also type period-at-spam (which looks like this: .@spam ) and the username of the spammer. You do not need to include the @ sign in front of the username you are reporting.

Rule Number Three: If someone follows you, and you don't want them to see your updates or show up on your followers list, BLOCK THEM. This is a very useful feature, because not only does it take the person off of your radar, but when enough people block a user, Twitter will suspend their account.

It's usually fairly easy to tell when an account is a spammer when they follow you. If you receive email notification for each new follower, take a look at how many posts they've made, and how many followers they have compared to how many people they are following. Spammers (and especially porn promoters) ftend to have minimal updates (one or two) and are following far more people than are following them. If they've got 1 update, 3 followers, and are following 100 people, for example, chances are high that they are spammers of some sort. You can block them directly from a link in their email, without even looking at their profile.

Rule Number Four: NEVER click through to a site on a profile page that has a shortened URL. Shortened URLs are usually pretty easy to spot. Some of the more easily recognized ones start with "http://bit.ly/", or "http://tinyurl.com/" but invariably, they don't end there. They will have a string of nonsense numbers and letters following the / sign. While some porn sites do list their own, REAL URL, they are more likely to use a shortening service.

Finally, a tip about one of the less-well-known features of Twitter, Protecting Your Entries. This is really the best route to use for children's accounts, so parents, take note! If you go to your Twitter profile and click on Settings, you will be looking at the Account tab. Down at the bottom of this page is a checkbox that says "Protect My Updates". Clicking this checkbox will mean that no one can follow you without your permission. Your updates will not show in the general timeline, but only on the Twitter feeds of the people you have allowed.

It won't remove followers that are already on your list, so you'll need to go ahead and block those that you don't want, but in the future, anyone wanting to follow you will have to request permission. Most spammers and porn vendors won't bother, and if they do, you can use the steps above to decide if they are spammers, and simply deny them permission.

Now you have some great tools to protect yourself and your children from spam and porn on Twitter. Go forth and Tweet!