Be Careful with Twitter Lists

Posted by Gabe on November 11, 2009 under Twitter | 26 Comments to Read

I checked my Twitter profile this morning and noticed I had a big jump in the number of lists that mentioned me.  My smile morphed into a look of perplexity when I discovered that all the new lists came from the same user.  That’s funny, I thought. I was about to walk away from the issue when I looked deeper into these lists.  I won’t give the user any publicity, but they were claiming to host names of child sex traffickers, sexual predators and other cyber crimes.  These are the lists that I was on!!  It seems to be some sort of new bot that is putting random people (I am in good company with Regis and Kelly) on these lists.

The good news is that if you block and/or report as spam you will automatically be taken off all their lists.  I couldn’t do that fast enough.

So now we have to make sure all the lists that we are being put on are legitimate.  Twitter can be such a great tool, but also can be quite frustrating thanks to the other “tools” that are using it.

UPDATE 11/28/09: Not all Twitter lists are as offensive as the one mentioned.  I just discovered that I was on a list created by someone who has a “thing” about a company.  This morning I read an interesting post that challenged a particular company to get better instead of just advertise.  I liked the read so I retweeted it.  This afternoon I discovered I was on a list of “People who are Disappointed with So-and-So Company”.  I didn’t want to be part of the list creator’s agenda, so I blocked him to get me off the list.  So again, be vigilant in combing through the lists you appear on.