As your follower count grows on Twitter you will exponentially be hit with more and more follows and targeted direct messages and replies from spammers, trolls and other unsavoury folk. This article will provide you with steps on how to tackle these nuisances.

Spam

1. Follow @Spam

@Spam is Twitter’s anti-spam account. Spammers can be reported to @spam via direct message using the following code:

D spam @nameofspammer

You can also send multiple submissions, like this:

D spam @nameofspammer1 @nameofspammer2 @nameofspammer3

Note that this account is only for reporting spam accounts, not for trolls or people you don’t like.

2. Block Them

One of the best ways to deal with spammer accounts on Twitter is by simply blocking them. Accounts that are blocked by many users raise a red flag which will lead to an investigation and probably removal by Twitter. If you just unfollow a spammer, this does not happen. Block them. To do this, visit their profile and click on the ‘block’ link.

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I’ve observed a few times on here about how one of the most lacking features on Twitter, Seesmic Desktop, TweetDeck – or anywhere else, for that matter – is the ability to mass-delete direct messages.

Once you’ve been on Twitter for a reasonable period of time, thanks to auto-messaging and genuine DMs from your friends and followers you’ll very quickly build up a large list. This is fine until you decide you want to delete some or all of them. Twitter only allows you to do this on a per message basis. If you have a lot of them, this will take forever, and the most likely result is that you won’t bother.

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