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Why do I get followed on Twitter by nonexistant profiles?

by Loren Woirhaye
8 replies
Is there some pattern that gets these folks banned?

Somebody I really know followed me this morning and I click
to follow the guy back (from my email) and the profile
is gone.

What happens here? I doubt he's a spammer.
#nonexistant #profiles #twitter
  • Profile picture of the author LADWebDesign
    There are many scammers that register well-known internet marketers usernames and place an underscore between the name or an underscore after the name to make it look like someone you may know.


    Linda
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  • Profile picture of the author jacstone193
    yes - bugs me too
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    Jack Stone - Who strongly believes that helping others is the best way to help yourself !
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    • Profile picture of the author Nathan Hangen
      If an account suddenly has a lot of activity, such as massively following people, then Twitter will ban the account. They also do this if the name is stolen (I see a lot of fake Eben Pagans).

      Not sure if there is a follow script, but Twitter is pretty good about removing bad accounts.
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  • Profile picture of the author studygm
    I received that too. I wonder why....
    Signature

    Cool tips and articles exclusively on
    www.blog.studygrandmaster.com

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  • Profile picture of the author dsmpublishing
    Its a big con people use fake accounts to spam people but twitter is pretty good at dealing with it and most of the time by the time you get round to following them back they have been suspended. I get about 50 unfollows a day from spammers that have been kicked off and it can be hard to avoid.
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  • Profile picture of the author terrapurus
    I follow a few well known marketers and started seeing me being followed by similar profiles with an added middle initial. I wondered what was the point - I knew these people were not real and he could not spam me unless I added him (which was not going to happen). So I checked out the twitter profile. 2000 following, 173 followers, 1 update. The single update was an affiliate link. Looks like 173 people were duped and followed him. Probably had a few people even buy too unfortunately in that many followed before twitter wiped him.
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  • Profile picture of the author Dana_W
    Poor Willie Crawford has people create fake accounts with his name and even his picture all the time. Always linking to a clickbank product.

    But my favorite, my absolute favorite, was when I was followed by Joel O'Comm.
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