A person holds a magnifying glass over a computer screen displaying various Twitter clients logos, in this file illustration picture taken in Skopje September 10, 2013. Twitter Inc raised the top end of its IPO price range by 25 percent and will close its books a day early, signaling strong demand for the most closely watched Silicon Valley debut since Facebook Inc last year. Pricing of Twitter's shares ends Wednesday, with public trading of the stock expected for November 7, 2013. REUTERS/Ognen Teofilovski

Twitter has just removed its option for users to receive direct messages (DM) from any follower, whether or not that follower is being followed on Twitter. Just a month after this feature was available for users, Twitter decided to remove it.

According to Twitter, a direct message (DM) is a private message sent to a chosen follower when logged in on a Twitter account. This DM can only be sent to a user who is following you. Likewise, a DM can only be received from certain users that you actually follow.

Last Oct. 15, 2013, The Verge noticed that Twitter decided to update this option and allow any follower to send you a DM, regardless of whether you are following that person back or not.

"If you check this option, any Twitter user that follows you will be able to send you a DM, regardless of whether you decide to follow them back," says a note before the option is turned on in a report by The Verge.

The Verge suspects that Twitter introduced this particular option so that several businesses and brands can receive direct messages from each of their followers.

This doesn't come as a surprise since Twitter now has a lot of businesses in its network who use Twitter as a platform to reach out to its consumers and target markets. Plus, Twitter seems to be improving its DM features lately, including adding the ability to sync the status of DMs for Android, iOS and Mac users and sending news and alerts about popular tweeters through direct messages.

This DM option can reportedly be enabled from Twitter.com's main settings page. But, it's only available to a select few as Twitter is just testing it out.

According to The Next Web (TNW), this option could cause a lot of spam to be received in the Twitter inboxes. When TNW asked Twitter about this feature, a spokesperson for the microblogging company referred them to a previously released statement about direct messages and verified accounts.

A month passed and now, Twitter decided to finally remove this option to receive direct messages from any follower. When Twitter user Mathew Ingram (@mathewi) asked Twitter why they did that, Twitter referred Ingram to the company's blog post called "Experiments @ Twitter."

Below is Ingram's tweet to Twitter:

I asked Twitter why the "accept DMs from anyone" feature is gone, and all I got was a link to this post: https://t.co/HMfDnHiEn6

— Mathew Ingram (@mathewi) November 18, 2013

Upon visiting Twitter's Help page on posting or deleting direct messages, a tip about making sure that users follow you in order to send a direct message to them, is emphasized. "Tip: Make sure that user follows you. You can only send a direct message to your followers even though you can receive messages from all users you follow," noted Twitter on the Help page about DMs. A message about restructuring the DM system can also be seen at the top of the page. "We're restructuring back-end elements of our direct message system. As a result, users may be unable to send some URLs in direct messages. We apologize for the inconvenience," wrote Twitter on the Help page about direct messages. Now that Twitter has removed the option to receive direct messages from any follower, DM spam can finally be lessened. Regarding DM spam in Twitter, the company posted a tweet that users can now report direct messages as spam. See the tweet below:

Now you can report direct messages as spam on http://t.co/zDdcbPNfnU. Hover over a DM and click the ⊘ icon, like so: pic.twitter.com/ZlWw6oK9PX — Support (@Support) November 8, 2013