There has been a recent rash of hacked twitter accounts. You usually find out about it when your followers tell you that “you” have sent them a DM (Direct Message) like the ones below (real examples) The good news is it’s quite easy to fix and fairly easy to prevent in the first place:

• New Miracle Diet is Finally Expsed (dodgy link) it really works
• I lost a bunch of weight, this stuff works! look at news article (dodgy link)
• Get the beach body you’ve always wanted, now you can with this weight loss supplement (dodgy link)
• Have you heard millions of people are making $5k+/Mo from home? heres how.. (dodgy link)
• Someone said this real bad thing about you in a blog…. (dodgy link)
• Lose weight guaranteed with Ultra HCG (dodgy link) i lost 26 lbs!

What has happened?

Your account has been compromised. Someone dodgy has access to your twitter account and is sending DMs to your followers using your account.

What to do?

If you have fallen victim to a hacker, go straight to the twitter help centre (http://support.twitter.com/), click on the “Report a Violation” section and follow their instructions. You will soon be free of the pest.

How to stop it happening in the first place.

1. Whatever you do, don’t click a (dodgy link). It takes a little experience to know what a dodgy link looks like: they look spammy and impersonal. Twitter is about connecting with people you are interested in and on the whole they don’t send spammy links.

The examples above give you a good idea of what they look like. I would not expect any of my followers to send me that kind of message with a link. If you get a DM that looks spammy, don’t click the link.

2. Don’t follow back spammy followers. If you do follow back spammy followers, they can send you a spammy DM which gets the whole thing started. Here’s a picture of some spammy followers. They don’t look like real accounts:

If you get spammy followers, do the world a favour and report them for spam:

Happy tweeting. It’s a sad reality that these spammers exist. I’m guessing they put a lot of people off, especially new starters who might not be aware of what they look like.