Spammers have infiltrated Twitter.  This has been going on for a little while, but now they’re starting to irritate me just a bit.  Basically what happens is that you have these Twitter accounts created, usually with just one tweet – a link to some sham website that will invariably try to take you for a ride.  Like most spam messages, they promise fame, fortune, and too-good-to-be-true deals.  Check out the profiles of these Twitter spammers and you’ll see that they are following thousands of legitimate Twitter users.

Fine.  This is all well and good.  I always check everyone who follows me.  I usually don’t return the follows unless I find that individual interesting.  So when I discover that I’ve been followed by a Twitter spammer, I just ignore them so as not to subject myself to further Twitter spam from that account. 

What I find somewhat surprising (but only a little) is how many followers some of these Twitter spammers have in return.  Now, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that some of these followers are other Twitter spammers, but the vast majority are legitimate Twitter users who, presumably, just reflexively follow anyone who follows them.  There seems to be an unspoken rule out there on Twitter that if someone follows you, you’re obligated to return the favor.  This is a rule that makes little sense to me because ultimately it leaves you receiving thousands of tweets a day.  I’m currently following almost 100 other Twitter users, and as it is I receive a couple of thousand tweets a day, most of which never get read simply because I haven’t the time.  I can’t imagine what it’d be like if I were following every single one of the 60 people who are following me.  It’d just be that many more tweets I don’t have time in a day to read or follow-up on.

Well, that was fun.  I’ve been having some issues recently with a couple of my WordPress installations.  In a nutshell, every form that has anything to with communication to the database was choking.  Data wasn’t being saved to the database, screens weren’t loading properly, functions weren’t… functioning.  It took me a little while of searching (and no little amount of stress and worry) but I finally stumbled across a solution that just felt right.  I’ve been using Bad Behavior for awhile now in conjunction with Akismet to catch and filter out spam.  Between the two, they’ve done a fabulous job, making it a rare occurrence when even a single spam item slips through the cracks. 

Unfortunately, apparently Bad Behavior has failed before, prompting an upgrade from 2.0.7 to the current version of 2.0.10.  Trouble is, now 2.0.10 is malfunctioning and it blocking all scripts that had anything to do with communicating with the database.  My guess is that something has gone wrong with Bad Behavior servers, potentially causing some sort of “feedback” loop.  I – and a couple of others – have left comments notifying the author of the problem, so hopefully we’ll see a new version released in the near future.  In the meantime, problem solved and everything seems to be functioning properly again.

International Opponents becomes White Circle in final:

White TV becomes Profound Chair in final to Play Table you should be very White , Profound, Bad, Good nothing comparative to Industrious Green Tournament becomes Astonishing Boy in final

two thumbs up mistery will opponents unconditionally

Hope Hope Love – that is all that Table is capable of when tournament love soldier increase , Table will Game unconditionally make hope roll – that is all that chips is capable of

Game will Plane unconditionally

when Slot Double Pair Destroy Grass can Play Round , Win Chair is very good Cosmos Player will Circle unconditionally

I’ve recently started using Akismet to filter out the spam garbage from my site, and honestly, I do find myself chuckling quite a bit as I check through the filter to make sure nothing legitimate got snagged by accident.  Do spammers really think that anyone is going to actually click on any of their links out of curiosity when the nonexistent syntax is such a thinly veiled attempt to steer you toward illegitimate websites.  Now, I realize that most spam is pretty automated these days, but still, you’d think they’d at least try to do a better job of disguising it, right?  I’m glad they don’t, though; it makes it a lot easier to recognize it for what it is and get rid of it before it becomes a major nuisance.

Final note, hopefully, on the comment spam and trackback issue—I found a different bot check software called Captcha! that still provides the security of random image generation to prove human commenting but that also allows continued trackback capability.  Non-registered users will have to type in the code at the bottom of the comment field before submitting, where registered users will not need to verify their comments.  Oh, and let me know if you find the font too difficult to read because that’s an option I can change.

Enough of this….