As with all good things on the web, people want to make money from it. On Twitter, usually people want to get you to click on a link that will either take you to their affiliate site (A site that earns them money if you buy something) or a porn site.
Rule of thumb is USE CAUTION. If something sounds too good to be true, it IS. Avoid conversations or following people that follow thousands and only have a few people following them. If a user has lots of followers, chances are they are ok, but still be careful. Know what you are clicking on if possible. I know it’s hard with all the url shortening services out now, but try and click on things that come from people you know or reputable news sources.
Sometimes if you mention a word, let’s say you are talking about playing Go Fish with your 8 year old. You may get a reply from someone called @fish_lover like this one:
Weird right? Don’t reply back. Block and/or report people like that. They are responding to you automatically based on a keyword you typed in.
Here is another great blog post about Steps on Stopping Spammers on Twitter. This post talks about how you can block and report people.
