Verba @ McAWilliams.com

Todays question comes because of the many tweets I have seen all week in relation to spammers on Twitter.

“This week spammers have been at large on Twitter, will this surge bring you to protect your updates to avoid them or is that in turn ruining the social side of Twitter. All opinions welcomed”

Kenmcguire said “Nope… think if we ignore them they’ll just go away? It’s a bit much alright, I’m noticing 2-3 a day but not enough for me to lockdown, am comfortable with public tweets!”

Icedcoffee added “there have been spammers for ages - if I spot any I just block em, it hasnt caused me too much hassle in the past and cant check tweetrush if updates are protected.”

GavReilly took a different view to blocking “I’m not bothered about being followed by spammers, I simply choose not to follow them back. That way they’re off my radar. I don’t consider it a victory for them if I’m not following them. If they spend time following me pointlessly they’re losers. Rather, I mean ‘fruitlessly’. It takes no input from me to ignore them, but someone on the other end has wasted *their* time.”

PixieVonDust who has locked her updates responded with “I started protecting my updates recently but it was the privacy aspect rather than spammers that pushed me. When I got that security guy to ‘hack my identity’ online he found loads of personal info via twitter. That freaked me out.”

My own opinion to locking the accounts is that it takes away from social networking to which PixieVonDust replied “I might open it up again now that you’ve mentioned that. I don’t want to lock out potential friends I guess.”

Debbiemet said “Protected updates to me just means people I want follow me and I turn down the spammers. No less social. I keep an eye out and follow others, and I do get requests from friends of friends when friends reply to me too.”

Jkeyes gave an interesting view “no, I protected my updates before and it’s a pain in the arse, I just block them”

Marramgrass agreed “I like meeting new people. I can lock a few a day. If it gets to hundreds of spammers a day, then I’ll rethink.”

Moonstruckmania joined in to give a stateside view “I would only close updates If I felt there was some stalkerish type activity. I understand why people do it, but it sure takes out some of the fun for us nosy folks ;o) oh and good morning twitterville! but thinking those of you who twitter from work may have a very good reasons to have locked updates, I might if I worked”

BenKenealy replied with “I wouldnt have protected updates because of spammers. I did it because keeps my insane rants comments from public domain im a private enough person. I can come up with random stuff that I wouldnt want sticking in the real world.”

I was thrilled to see some followers from earlier answer the question and I welcome them to Question Time
AsteraPallas was first with “I won’t protect my entries to avoid spammers. I’ll just block them. ;^)”

Then 10zlaine replied “as one of the more paranoid, I’ve done both & decided to unlock & block, else why tweet?”

Another person with locked updates is Redwinegums who said “Nah, spammers don’t concern me. Potential job conflicts do with tweets. Why I use the pseudonym :-)”

Mitzs also said “I’ll be keeping mine open too. Miss to many great people otherwise.”

As usual last tweeter to join in was Bigstevie1275 “well if the spammers wanna read posts about what I had for lunch then fine but I’ll not follow anybody that that I havnt seen posting they Are a pain on the arse but can they be stopped ? Prob not”

So its great to see locked or unlocked the spammers are not dictating how people use twitter but rather privacy is the main driving force behind the lockdown.

Many thanks again to everyone who took part today, especially those who have contributed for the first time and see you all again hopefully for my next random question on Tuesday!!!

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