@marylarson I’ve never experienced anything like that before. I’m curious to hear what other have to say about it.

That has happened to a friend. If you click on it, your account will be hacked and you will send that message to everyone who is following you.

The person who you received the message from probably made that mistake.

Definitely delete the message without opening it.

@marylarson If you have Google Alerts set for your name, your business name, and your Twitter name, you don’t have to worry because you will already know what people are saying about you.

@marketinggeek Oh, that makes sense! You would think by now people would know not to click on a random link like that!

@trudyd1474 These are definitely coming from Twitter, not FB. I don’t play games on FB because I just don’t have the time.

@debbielynnava Yes, I do have Google alerts set. I was not worried that these DM were true, I just am getting tired of them.

@kc_kreative I hate to block someone who was the victim of spam, but I will definitely look at my Tweetdeck and see what I can do.

Thanks everyone for your help!

 @juleswebb Google Alerts also work for common misspellings of your name.

@marylarson You’ve gotten some great advice here. Those tweets are spam, sent unknowingly to you by a bot that took over a friend/acquaintance Twitter account. Never click them, or you will do the same to others. And get malware installed on your computer in the process.

Instead, you might send a message (not a DM) to that person in a friendly tone suggesting that it looks like their Twitter account was hacked and maybe they should change their password.

Google alerts are awesome. They are basically saved Google searches that let you know each time Google finds more things caught for your search. Try the search first, use the advanced search features to really customize the results, and then copy and paste that search into the Google Alerts page.

Generally the people who are sending it have had their account highjacked because they did click it. This is the reason most people don’t use DM anymore without tweeting to the person you have sent it. Also, the other accounts that have this are generally bots that people who auto follow get. 

Great discussion here, thanks for the question, Mary. I have received that message and just deleted it. Good advice about setting up alerts. @marylarson