Washington, D.C. attacks Twitter? Nah, just spammers.

Several months too late, the spirits of primaries past have come to haunt us on Twitter.

When I opened up my inbox, I had quite a list of followers waiting to be checked out.

Did Mike Gravel, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, and Chris Dodd suddenly decide it would be a great idea to add us all as Twitter friends once again? Nah. It's just some crafty spam-artists trying to take advantage of the "follow you, follow me" culture of Twitter.

This is part of a growing trend on Twitter, one that Adam Ostrow over at Mashable pointed out last week. Spammers are creating accounts on Twitter for the sake of following thousands of users and hoping they'll follow back. How do they follow so many users so quickly? Automated following bots allow them to follow thousands of users in record time.

I completely agree with Adam Ostrow's solution: require a CAPTCHA to be filled out for each new follower on Twitter. Let's cut down on the spammers (or at least make it much more difficult to be a spammer) on Twitter before it's too late.