I haven’t been on twitter for ages, perhaps even weeks. It has been sitting quietly open on my desktop just not used. I have flicked by it a number of times and contemplated reading tweets but have refrained claiming that I just didn’t have time. Occasionally I would check the direct messages that were sent my way – they are so few and far between that I really didn’t check often at all, I would wait for my email to notify me.
So to cut to the chase, I had a direct message from someone who I don’t often message so I thought I would check it out. The message was asking ‘Is this you?’ with a link. Now I have been in the local media of late and I was wondering if I had been discovered in the real world so I clicked on the link. It took me to a page that said Twitter was busy, try again later. As the dupe that I am, I did try again later, many, many times. Eventually it took me to a different page, a page that I can’t really remember but I think referred to losing grip on reality – a fair description of my world of late. I wondered if it was a subtle suggestion that I should take a step back and try to relax. Of course before I replied, after checking the link a few million more times, I was sidetracked by life and promptly forgot all about Twitter.
The next time I thought about Twitter was again via email, saying I had more direct messages, this time from friends saying I was sending random messages. It seems that my Twitter account has been infiltrated by an evil spam bot. I have been sending out spam to people left right and centre and not only to people that I follow! OOPS.
Of course I had no idea how to make it stop, I couldn’t appease the Twitter gods so I did what any good help desk operator recommends – Shut Down and Reboot. Fingers crossed it has worked. If not, any suggestions on how to remove a spam bot from Twitter?
