I'm using Echofon to keep up with the tweets of people I'm following. But at the moment I get a lot of spam tweets (from people I am NOT following), see this picture:They all contain the same hashtag: #cohen (a trending topic at the moment in The Netherlands).WHY do I it get this messages and HOW I can get rid of this annoying tweets?
Twitter and Echofon spam
twitter;spam prevention
Echofon is notifying you that a Twitter user has mentioned your twitter account in one of their own tweets. In the Twitter web interface, you would see these tweets under the @ Connect tab, possibly buried under the option labeled Mentions.There are numerous spam bots that will tweet at you, usually in response to one of your public tweets that mentions a keyword. As you stated, webcam was one that attracted the bots. Mention of various Apple Computer product names is one that I've seen attract the bots in full force.When your public tweet brings your Twitter account to the attention of the spambots, they will react. One of the ways in which they react is to reply to your tweet or to mention you.You post something like:My new remote controlled helicopter arrives tomorrow! Hooray!And the spambots respond with:@your-twitter-account I know, right? i got mine today from (some spam  link)@your-twitter-account FREE HELICOPTER FOR THE FIRST TEN PEOPLE (some  spam link)Hey, I think @your-twitter-account is loving his new remote from (some  spam link)@your-twitter-acocunt @someone-else #trendinghashtag (spam link) i  blah bloop bleepWhen Echofon asks Twitter for a list of your mentions and/or interactions, the tweets from the spam bots are included in the list. Echofon then notifies you of these tweets.In a world without spam, this is useful behavior. It facilitates conversations with new people who you might not have otherwise interacted with.Echofon for iOS recently (as of May 8, 2012) gained a new feature: Refine push notification settings  Added an option receiving mentions notification only from people you followEchofon for Windows and for Firefox do not seem to have such a feature yet.You could request the feature be added to Echofon, you could tolerate the occasional spam notifications (and report/block the accounts), or you could find another Twitter client that has a feature to suppress notification of mentions from accounts you do not follow.Best of luck!