If you have not already seen a bunch of direct messages that claim to have found you in a video somewhere or other useless direct messages that we all call “spam”, perhaps you have not used Twitter very much. However, for those of you who get frustrated by this, I have two solutions for you as follows:

First: Change your password and tell everybody you know to do the same. Do not wait! Do it now, while it is still fresh in your mind. Many of those direct messages are coming from people whose accounts were compromised and they do not even know they are sending them. You may be sending them and not know. After all, have you told each of those people you receive these messages from that they sent you some junk? No, and they may not have told you either. Changing your Twitter password will clear this up in most cases. Do not get frustrated, unfollow them, or be mean. Simply remind them to change their password, and that will clear up a lot of the problem.

Second: Use this Twitter direct message opt-out list to remove yourself from the many companies sending direct messages on behalf of others. This will alleviate so much junk in your direct messages you may be shocked.

I hope you will steer from the crowd who think it could not possibly happen to them and be inspired to update your Twitter password. There has been a huge rash of security matters to show why this is important, but yet, so many people assume that it has not happened to them. Let me break this to you easy … if you think it cannot happen to you, it probably already has. Whether this is at Twitter or elsewhere, if you take that attitude, you are at the highest risk to be compromised. All it often takes is to click on a link and all of the sudden you are sending junk messages to everybody following your feed.

Please pass this along to help yourself and others!

If you found this information useful, you may also find much more information about Twitter in my recent book, Twitter for Business: Twitter for Friends. You may order Twitter for Business: Twitter for Friends in any of the following ways: