Matthew Lydy's dashboard

A comment on the problem "Not getting email when someone follows me" in Twitter:

Great idea! I also like mdoeff's idea too. Twitter should so get that in their system. – Chris Thomson, on June 26, 2008 18:03

A comment on the problem "Not getting email when someone follows me" in Twitter:

@familydoctormag, Good to know you got the email notification when I followed you. I'm not a spammer! Hurray! 8-) – mdy, on June 14, 2008 03:06

mdy replied on June 12, 2008 07:50 to the problem "Not getting email when someone follows me" in Twitter:

I'm still getting follower notifications via email when the person who follows me isn't a mass-follower. Afaik, Twitter only supresses email notifications when the user that followed you is already known to them to be a mass-follower.

As a test, I just followed you (@familydoctormag) using one of my accounts. It will be interesting to see if you get a notification email.

I know from other threads in this forum that Twitter flags for review any account that has been blocked by a lot of people, and I have no reason to believe that's not still the case.

It also looks like they will be soon (if not already) be enforcing limits in the number of follows, based on this new FAQ page that I saw recently.

FamilyDoctorMag replied on June 12, 2008 07:09 to the problem "Not getting email when someone follows me" in Twitter:

Has there been any other answer to this yet, or is this still the policy? Why is there not just a cutoff number of people you're allowed to follow per hour? Secondary: If enough people mark you as a spammer, Twitter could look at your account to see if you are.

This system of hiding followers is both filtering out nonspammers and taking the control out of our hands. Please consider changing it--soon!

A comment on the problem "Not getting email when someone follows me" in Twitter:

I also agree with David and GeekMommy - I'd like to know without having to page through, check the new follower's page, then block as needed. – pattigibbons, on June 12, 2008 00:49

A comment on the problem "Not getting email when someone follows me" in Twitter:

Agree with David and GeekMommy. This is not a solution, it adds to the problem. – Scott Cranfill, on June 10, 2008 03:19

A comment on the problem "Not getting email when someone follows me" in Twitter:

I like this idea. I would add one thing - a checkbox configuration to enable/disable this "spammer alert" email. – mdoeff, on June 08, 2008 20:37

A comment on the problem "Not getting email when someone follows me" in Twitter:

You get e-mail when a non-spam account starts following you. I'll prove by following you ;-) //edit: voila you got mail ;-) – ikkekietje, on June 08, 2008 19:38

@joebird replied on June 08, 2008 19:36 to the problem "Not getting email when someone follows me" in Twitter:

I don't get notified of new followers either, but I can see my count growing. It's so annoying. I want to follow back the legit people.

ikkekietje replied on June 08, 2008 18:58 to the problem "Not getting email when someone follows me" in Twitter:

O btw: You can go to http://dossy.org/twitter/karma/ and filter your followers to see only the people that follow you and you don't follow back, then you can see easily who's a spamfollower. You can bulk block. (site can have some problems 'cause of the twitter problems)

ikkekietje replied on June 08, 2008 17:53 to the problem "Not getting email when someone follows me" in Twitter:

They should just send us a e-mail like this:

Hi, *username*.

*name* (*nickname*) is now following your updates on Twitter.

We think this user might be a spam account, according to the number of people he/she is following.
Spam accounts cause troubles so if this is not somebody you know, you can block the person in order to help keeping twitter clean and fun.

Check out *username* profile here (mind that clicking any links can send you to inappropriate websites):
http://twitter.com/*username*

You can block this account by clicking here:
https://twitter.com/blocks/confirm/12...

Best,
Twitter

This way you still get a notice when someone is following you but you know it probably will be spam...
What do you think about that?

A comment on the problem "Not getting email when someone follows me" in Twitter:

Gotta agree with David here - not giving me notice of the add so I can block the user only aids the spammer... I'd rather have that control back in my hands, thanks :( – GeekMommy, on June 06, 2008 02:46

David replied on June 06, 2008 01:55 to the problem "Not getting email when someone follows me" in Twitter:

By keeping our followers list random AND refusing to let us know when a spammer starts following us, you help them. As I read this it is a purposeful choice by Twitter to aid the spammers.

It is easy to see from the numbers that these accounts are not being deleted. If you wanted to help, users would be able to see new follows in their accounts rather than a random list so we could review them.

Jason Goldman replied on June 06, 2008 01:51 to the problem "Not getting email when someone follows me" in Twitter:

Yes, preventing the sending of follower mail for users we believe may be spammy is just one of the solutions we're working on for spam.

A comment on the problem "Not getting email when someone follows me" in Twitter:

In the interview above, they did say that this is just the first in a series of anti-spam measures that they're going to take. – mdy, on June 06, 2008 01:29

A comment on the problem "Not getting email when someone follows me" in Twitter:

It's not so much that they're trying to make it easy for the spammers to get in under the radar. Twitter knows that they're coming in. They are doing this to reduce the annoyance of getting the follow messages. They then review, and sometimes delete the account that triggered the suspicion. I would not expect this to be the final solution, just a way to ease the annoyance for users while they work out a good and automated way to deal with this new breed of dummy. – AlexDeGruven, on June 05, 2008 22:30

A comment on the problem "Not getting email when someone follows me" in Twitter:

I don't think it's anything like that. I think it's just that they had put this in place without advertising it, in order to keep the spammers from getting wise. Of course, now that we're all talking about it, that has kind of defeated the purpose. But then, we all know that spammers are dumb. – AlexDeGruven, on June 05, 2008 22:25

exador23 replied on June 05, 2008 21:45 to the problem "Not getting email when someone follows me" in Twitter:

So if twitter has a way to detect the follow whores, why doesn't that trip a captcha or something to stop or slow their bot activity instead of just letting them follow without our knowledge?????

I don't get it. When did greasing the skids for spammers become a solution?

A comment on the problem "Not getting email when someone follows me" in Twitter:

yes, thanks Alex. Does this mean twitter is giving up on getsatisfaction? Do we need to start blogs to get twitter to pay attention to user concerns? – exador23, on June 05, 2008 21:38

A comment on the problem "Not getting email when someone follows me" in Twitter:

Thank you - it's good to know it's by design - BUT I'd rather be notified so I can block someone. I'd prefer to have the choice in my hands, not Twitter's. – GeekMommy, on June 04, 2008 21:31