Dear Twitter:

There’s not much I don’t love about Twitter. Since another writer convinced me to join last December, I’ve used it almost every day to find sources, do research, track events, report the news and kibbutz with friends.

But over the months, the amount of spam that’s showing up on the network has risen along with the number of new users. And more of that spam is X-rated

Yesterday was a new low. I clicked on the profile of someone who’d just started following me and saw the most graphic pornography I’ve ever encountered on Twitter, a photograph the spammer put up as their profile photo. It was a shock to say the least. And it could have been worse – my eight-year-old was in my office at the time. Good thing he was preoccupied with the TV.

I get that some people go online for porn. I also get that Twitter doesn’t want people to jump through a lot of security hoops to join, all the better for millions more to sign up.

But nobody should have to worry about what they’ll find when they open an email from Twitter notifying them of a new follower, or when they click on their Followers list.

So I’m asking, on my behalf, and for all of the other Twitter users out there who don’t want to be afraid of their inbox – stop the porn spam. Giving people a Twitter account to report spam is a start. Letting people block followers they don’t want to in their Followers list or to see tweets from is also good.

But it’s not enough. Figure out some kind of pre-screening mechanism. Maybe some of the Twitter apps that are out there can already screen for this stuff. For the time being, I’ve turned off email notification so I won’t get messages about new followers, just in case.

I’ve done my share of evangelizing Twitter to coworkers, family and friends. But this is giving me second thoughts. My daughter’s on Twitter – what if she’d gotten that porn spam instead of me?

Come on Twitter, help us out.