O.K, I just went over the edge dealing with Twitter spam. Today, I am getting a bunch of Direct Messages from all the folks who got "phished" and did not protect their password. Then, there are the inappropriate followers. Today, I was going through my "followers" for the week and trying to eliminate inappropriate ones.

Some people ask why I care. Well, I have my twitter account set up to follow everyone back. Why? Because too many people ask, "Why don't you follow me?" I could only follow the people I know, but just because I don't know you does not mean I find you unimportant. Most of my Twitter-friends I never meet in person.

Since I have over 18,000 followers, there is no way I can check them all. Of course, that is what some people suggest, but basically that means I need to spend way too much time or pay someone to do it. I am not willing to do either. So, what I do is I watch the names when I get the email notification of new followers. For the vast majority of time, they are just names, and I don't worry about it. Sometimes the twitter avatar is obvious--and you block it.

Sometimes, they are questionable though--they might be something inappropriate or it might just be a name.

Let me give you an example. These folks followed me:

www.twitter.com/thebabesproject.

OK. Do I block or not?

I look at their avatar, and can't tell by that. But I'm not feeling too optimistic. So, I click the link and it works out fine. Turns out they are all about "coming alongside women, facing crisis pregnancy and offering positive alternatives to abortion, through adoption or parenting." Whew. They followed me because I was speaking somewhere on adoption.