The last person to follow me on twitter was @GEM PAWNBROKERS—New York's largest Pawnbroker Over 20 locations NYC area—which says a lot about how little I matter. But I'm also chased by spam accounts. Wired's Ryan Singel investigates.
As Ryan points out, they're totally harmless if you just pretend they don't exist. They might clog up your mention list ("@AQQQXF HELLO SIR click this WHAT OMG??"), but if you ignore their automated pleas for attention, you can't get scammed.
Still, Twitter does their best to figure out who's a human and who's a bot. Which can be tricky, because so much of Twitter is filled with subhuman discourse from actual flesh and blood users. [Wired]