Member Avatar for InsightsDigital

On Twitter, there are Follows and Followers. Thus, it does not surprise me that there could be many bogus or padded accounts who follow me on twitter. Having a business related Twitter account, I check on who is following me. If the Follower seems legit, I follow them. If not, I dont follow them. What is your policy regarding Twitter Followers? At SES NY conference, Guy Kawasaki said he follows everyone though many internet marketers do not follow his advice.
http://searchengineland.com/26-people-who-mislead-you-on-twitter-21561

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A short practical add-on to this thread that pulls together what several of you are already doing (, , ): fake or low‑quality accounts are common and they distort reach and engagement, so treat follower hygiene as part of account hygiene. Independent audits find a sizeable slice of active public accounts are likely fake/spam, and academic work shows automated accounts account for a large share of link-sharing on the platform. (sparktoro.com)

Quick triage checklist you can apply as new followers arrive (fast manual pass, then a scheduled audit):

  • Profile completeness: bio, real‑looking avatar (reverse‑image if suspicious).
  • Activity: date created, last tweet, tweet cadence.
  • Ratio and placement: follow/follower imbalance, not appearing on lists.
  • Engagement match: follower count vs likes/retweets/comments on recent posts.
  • Content signals: repeated links, identical comments, gibberish handles, sudden follower spikes.

These are the same signals used by common audit guides and tools — they speed up the “is this real?” decision before you follow back or accept a request. (socialmediaexaminer.com)

Operational steps and cautions: make your account private if you must control who can see posts (X/Twitter supports protected posts and follower approval). For larger lists, use reputable detectors (Botometer / academic audits, third‑party auditor services) but treat scores as probabilistic — follow up with manual checks because detection has limits. If accounts are abusive or clearly part of manipulation, report them under the platform’s spam/platform‑manipulation rules. For influencer buying or outreach, ask for native analytics (audience demographics, impressions) and run an audit before paying; purchased or bot-heavy audiences give poor ROI and reputational risk. (help.x.com)

This adds a bit of process to the instincts already suggested here: quick manual checks for everyday followers, scheduled audits for campaign/influencer work, and use platform/reporting tools when you find coordinated abuse.

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Member Avatar for MktgRob

For both my personal and business related accounts I check whenever someone follows me and, like you, if they are legit they remain. If not they are blocked. The two types I see a lot of and block automatically are ones that offer investment advice and ones that are from young women looking for new 'friends'. I just started a twitter feed for one of my clients and they are still building a following but I have already told them that they need to develop a policy in regards to this.

Member Avatar for InsightsDigital

I consider fake followers like weeds and there are many of them on Twitter.

Member Avatar for MktgRob

One of the other issues I have come across is followers who are actually competitors who are trying to glean some info that they might use for their benefit. Is there a way to create a private twitter feed that the owner can give permission to who he wants to follow his tweets?

Member Avatar for kronikmedia

There is not much you can do with fake followers on Twitter. Recently Twitter has grown in popularity so much that users have started flocking to it and registering accounts even though they hardly use it. A lot of marketing and search engine consultants are also using Twitter to build links, etc.

Member Avatar for MktgRob

Real or Fake?
http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread204090.html

As I was the person who started that thread I am curious to know what you mean by asking 'Real of Fake'? Are you talking about me or about the topic I brought up?

Member Avatar for MktgRob

There is not much you can do with fake followers on Twitter. Recently Twitter has grown in popularity so much that users have started flocking to it and registering accounts even though they hardly use it. A lot of marketing and search engine consultants are also using Twitter to build links, etc.

It comes down to due diligence. As you get new followers you have to check them out. Some, like the people who are posting sex offers and investement advice are obvious and can/should be blocked immeadiately. The others you need to read as many of their tweets as possible to try to glean what they are all about.

Member Avatar for InsightsDigital

Another type of Twitter Fake Followers are ones that capitalize on a Twelebrity's status and picture. The fake twelebrity uses a slight misspelling of the name and then post a link to a spammy site. This was the case some time ago with Jeremiah from Forrester. I was surprised he followed me and I clicked to the link and it was to a site that advertised "Free Google tricks" but it required credit card information for the shipment. I did not trust the fact that this transaction was not in a secured site - thus, no https. So I aborted the process. Then, for the next two days, I must have received at least a dozen or so calls from a weird number stating that it needed my credit card info. I did not trust this and after telling each caller a few times to stop calling me, it finally stopped. I wonder how many other people felled into this. You just have to exercise caution.

Member Avatar for Maximlis

I don't understand whats problem if a person with fake identity follow me. I think its only to increase the popularity.

Member Avatar for audrey110

Most of the fake followers sends you the messages of their products.That is a way to identify a fake follower.

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