Over the last few days, I’ve been followed by _stuntdubl_ , _rustybrick, and _randfish_ to name just three on Twitter. None of these were the genuine article… as is obvious by the trailing or preceding underscores. They are phishers on Twitter trying to make you think their posts are from people “in the know” (Which I’ve just called Phwittering). The real Twitterers are, by the way, Rustybrick of SE Roundtable fameand Todd from Clientside.
The real giveaway is how many people follow back. I looked at the _RustyBrick Phisher and over 60 people had followed back (out of 2900 that the phisher had started to follow) so even in the world of the informed, a huge percentage are getting sucked in.
The moral? Don’t follow people you don’t know!
Dixon.
Good point. But couldn’t many of the followers be using one of those automated following systems?