For all of those on Twitter, Facebook and the various other social media networks you’ve got to know this pain, the obnoxious, unending barrage of spam that constantly hampers our social media fun. You may follow someone on Twitter, thinking “this person seems cool”, then they send you 10 invitations to join their mafia family the next day.

WTF is a mafia family you may ask? I do. I still don’t know. Something pretty stupid that made two programmers living in the basement of their Grandma’s home bunches of money- probably, but nothing you (or I) care about. So why do seemingly neat people send this crap? Well the surprise is, most of them don’t, or at least don’t know they are. Often when you allow different games, applications or websites access to your social media accounts they implant little cookies (or whatever the techie term for it is) in your accounts and then start sending out crappy spam from you to others. Well this is one FAST way to lose friends and alienate people.

These spam attacks and hacking of social media accounts are on the rise, so if you’re a good Twit or FBer or at all deal in social media you need to know how to protect yourself against that gelatonous meat product mass called spam (both figuratively and literally-spams nasty). Here is your attack plan to stop spam in its track and protect (or regain)  your good name in social media.

1. Check your ‘outgoing’ box in whatever social media services you use, especially Twitter’s “sent” folder, if you see your sending “bet you can’t beat my IQ” quizzes – you know you’ve been hacked. Now you have to change your password and send out a message to your friends/fans/followers saying “Sorry I got spammy, I didn’t mean to” or something else similar to explain.

2. Don’t click others spammy surprises, you don’t know what viruses or food poisonings lurk below.

3. Don’t give your Twitter (or other social media) username & password out to anyone except trusted “white listed” applications. Cheesy games & random quizzes online qualify as the crap you don’t want to give your info to… even if it means you can’t play (boo hoo, grow up!).

4. In many of the social media platforms you can check to see who’ve you allowed access to your account in settings or preferences. If you don’t recognize them remove them immediately.

5. Change passwords often, even if you rotate between 3 make sure you change your passwords often enough that Spammers can’t hack you. This pays off big time because there is nothing worse than getting your precious credibility & brand crushed to pieces by a spam campaign you don’t know is happening. Even if switching passwords is a pain its worth it.

Also, be kind to others, if you see a colleague or interesting social media user spamming you like crazy message them back to ask if they know its going on. Often times they won’t and they’ll thank you for the heads up. Its like Spam Karma in a way… next time maybe they’ll get your back.

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