Preparedness – Your Key To Surviving A Disaster
Published September 4, 2009 | 
In any emergency, from a minor inconvenience to a major-league disaster, the key to getting through it safely is preparedness.
Luck can play a part, as can resourcefulness and ingenuity, but what makes the greatest difference is preparedness. In a minor nuisance it will make things easier – in a catastrophe, preparedness could save your life.
Two things have brought preparedness to my attention today. One is that through a tweet from Ozark’s Red Cross I’ve learned that in the USA September’s National Preparedness Month – the other’s that this morning we’ve had a power outage.
Not a disaster, granted, but still a nuisance that crashed computers and left the neighborhood unable to cook breakfast, turn a light on, keep warm on the coldest day we’ve had since winter, or even make a cup of coffee.
Last time it happened was late one winter’s afternoon – and I didn’t have a notion what to do.
It was dark, and I didn’t have a flashlight. It was cold, and I couldn’t find a sweater. There was no way of cooking dinner, and there wasn’t any canned food in the house. The road was icy, and in pitch darkness it wasn’t a good plan to try to make it to the car.
The outage lasted until morning, and I went to bed hungry, miserable, cold – and very, VERY angry with myself.
Preparedness? I’d never even HEARD of it!
This time it was different – and not only because it was over much more quickly. This time, there was canned food in the cupboard, a sweater handy, a flashlight close to the computer and a book to read until the power came back on.
This time, it was a minor inconvenience instead of a miserable experience I’m embarrassed to recall… and the difference was simply the preparedness.
In an emergency, you can ratchet up the difference preparedness will make by HUNDREDS of percentage points. A friend on Twitter often tweets he’s got to go because the hurricane alarm just sounded. The first time I tweeted back to check he and his family were OK. He seemed surprised – he regards interrupting what he’s doing to go deal with the arrival of a hurricane as an everyday occurrence!
His home has a hurricane shelter, and all the family know exactly what to do when the alarm sounds. They’re wary of these mega-winds – but not afraid of them. The key, he told me, is preparedness.
How good is YOUR preparedness for an emergency?
Does your home have at least one smoke alarm close to the most likely sources of a fire (the kitchen, and the room that your computer’s in), and do you test the batteries each week?
Does everyone in the family know how to get out if they’re ever trapped upstairs by fire?
Do the children know exactly how to get help in an emergency?
Do you have a first aid kit at home (and in the car), and does everyone know how to use it?
Do you know how to stop a kitchen fire in its tracks – and why you mustn’t just throw water at it?
Do you know that in a gas leak you must NEVER use the phone or switch the light on? (They both can give off sparks, too small for you to see, but big enough to set off an explosion. Open the window – break it if you have to – then go outside and use your cell-phone to get help.)
In a serious emergency, you haven’t time to think. It all depends on your preparedness.
Preparedness is key… and it’s quite easy.
The American Red Cross has a checklist that you might find useful. You can adapt the list to suit yourself – the things you’d need for an evacuation are the same as if you can’t get out because of floods or heavy snow, or if you catch the flu.
It’s worth a few minutes to go take a look – you never know when your life, or the lives of those you love, just might depend on your preparedness.
Fake RT Replies – The Latest Menace To Hit Twitter
Published July 21, 2009 | Fake RT replies are the latest menace to hit Twitter. We’ve already had advertising spam, porn spam, hacked accounts and random tweets from robots, and now we’ve got the latest twist – the fake RT reply.
In case you’ve not yet seen a fake RT reply (I hadn’t, till a couple of days ago), here’s how it works.
If you change your password regularly and are careful which applications you log into with it, hacking into your account and using it to send out advertising or malicious tweets is not that easy, so a spammer does the next best thing – harvests Twitter user names (quite easy, if you know how) and uses them to fake it.
How? By simply putting the user name, complete with “@”, into the update box and putting the letters RT in front of it. They’re then free to send whatever message, with whatever links, they like. It looks as if the original has come from you – and the first you know of it is when a copy lands in your Replies box!
If you find a fake RT reply in yours, don’t panic. (I did – I thought my account was being hacked, changed the password in a hurry, had a problem with the Twitter database and panicked worse, then accidentally locked myself out of TweetDeck, and caused myself sufficient inconvenience to satisfy a spammer’s wildest dreams!)
In one way, fake RT replies are GOOD news. A spammer who’s gained access to your account won’t waste time sending them; they’ll be too busy sending ORIGINAL tweets apparently from you. The fact they’re “only” sending fake RT replies means they haven’t had the chance to do that.
So why are fake RT replies important?
Because whatever’s going out in them will NOT be helpful to recipients… and they’ve got YOUR name on them.
That’s frustrating enough if your Twitter following is limited to a few friends you can quickly tweet and say you didn’t send the message. If you’re in business, with followers spanning different time zones, and the message goes out when you’re off-line, you’re in a living nightmare.
You may have heard the saying, “It takes 10,000 tweets to make your reputation… and only one to wreck it.” That’s all too true – and hard to take if the wrecking’s done by fake RT replies you haven’t had a hand in!
So, what’s the best way to handle fake RT replies?
- DON’T click any links in them. They may simply be irritating but essentially harmless advertising – but they can just as easily take you to a malware site which can download spyware or other harmful stuff that will compromise your internet security, ID and passwords without your knowledge. What does the sender of the fake RT replies want you to do? Click on the links. So do the opposite. Ignore them;
- If you’ve clicked on the link before you’ve thought about it, play safe by disconnecting your modem so that no information can be harvested by spybots, then run your spyware checker AND your virus checker;
- DO click on the sender’s name to visit their account, then click the Block button. You’ll see a message asking you to confirm the action. Click on Yes. One way Twitter identifies spammers is by the number of people blocking them. The more people block them, the faster they’re suspended;
- Go one step further, and report the sender to the Twitbroom spammer-busting service. Just start your message with @twitbroom, give the offender’s name (without the “@” at the beginning of the username), and add “sending fake RT replies”. Complete your message by adding the hashtag #twitspam, to make sure that as many people as possible will see your message, and hit Send. Your message will be sent to all @twitbroom’s followers, with a request to block the sender of the fake RT replies. Typically, the offender will be out of Twitter very quickly. (Please also start following @twitbroom – the more followers he has, the faster spammers are disposed of.);
- If you think your followers may have seen any of the fake RT replies, you might want to send a tweet and tell them that they haven’t come from you. If the sender only has a handful of followers then they should be the only ones at risk – but for all you know, some of your own followers might quite innocently be among them, and you don’t want to leave them open to a spyware attack, etc. A message saying you’ve discovered fake RT replies have been sent out in your name and warning any questionable links should be ignored might save someone on your list from a great deal of unpleasantness; and, very importantly…
- DON’T beat yourself up about it. You’re not to blame for someone else’s forgery, and if you take these simple steps to alert people to the existence of the fake RT replies, you’ll have done everything you can to put things right.
Finding someone’s hijacked your identity can be a very frightening experience… but, equally, it’s empowering to realize that you’ve come through it AND taken action to prevent it happening again. Senders of fake RT replies, like all the other types of spammers, can be dealt with – but only if their victims will fight back.
Posted in Social Media | 
Charles Yeo, fake RT replies, identity hijack, spam, spammers, spyware checker, twitbroom, twitspam, Twitter, virus checkerAt Exactly One Minute Past Midnight…
Published July 16, 2009 | How do you know for certain that you have the passion and commitment that will bring success and take you to the top? Here’s an example that might show you.
I’ve just been watching a TV documentary on Eddie Stobart, the famous Carlisle-based trucking company.
The company’s grown from humble origins into a massive undertaking which now additionally owns some little extras – like a motor-sport team, a helicopter, a plane… and Carlisle Airport. It even has a fan club, called the Eddie-Watchers.
Not surprisingly, the two guys who run it have the lifestyle to match, with race-horses, custom cars and all the trimmings you’d expect – but they haven’t always lived that way.
One of them, William Stobart, desperately wanted to be a trucker, even while he was still at school, but he had to wait till he was 21 to get his licence.
William had such a passion to drive trucks that he wasn’t going to wait a minute longer than he had to, so he applied for, and got, a provisional licence that would take effect as soon as he reached 21.
The night before his birthday, William never went to bed. He wasn’t partying – he was waiting for the very moment he could start to live his dream.
At one minute past midnight, William Stobart was on the road – at the wheel of his first truck.
Does your goal, your dream, your passion, mean that much to YOU?
Would you give up your birthday celebrations and your night’s sleep (or whatever the equivalent mnight be for you) because you couldn’t wait to learn a new skill… not for the rewards that it might someday bring you, but for the sheer delight of simply DOING it?
If so, congratulations – you have the passion that it takes to reach your goals.
If not, ask yourself – right now – what is it that WOULD make you feel that way?
Whatever it might be, THAT’S your true passion. If you want to be successful, find something that will let you use it.
Most things you lack right now can be supplied. You can increase your skills, your knowledge, your funding and your list of contacts. You can get almost anything you need from other people – but there’s one thing only YOU supply.
The passion that supplies your energy, determination, drive and creativity can only come from YOU… and you can’t achieve success without it. It’s the passion for doing what he loves that powers William Stobart… and it can do the same for you. Now, go find yours!
Law Of Attraction – When It Doesn’t Work For You
Published July 15, 2009 | Many people take up the Law of Attraction with great enthusiasm and work with it for a while, but find they don’t get what they want, decide it doesn’t work, and give it up.
That simply isn’t so. The Law of Attraction can no more stop working than the Law of Gravity. If it isn’t bringing you the things you want, you need to look more carefully at the signals that you’re sending out.
The Law of Attraction brings you what you focus on… but here’s the twist.
It doesn’t always see the things you focus on the same way YOU do.
The most common thing this happens with is work – the things you do to prepare yourself to receive the things you want.
Almost 2,000 years ago, people were arguing about the same thing – could you get what you wanted (in this case, to get into the Kingdom of Heaven) simply by believing that you could, or did you have to work for it?
The argument raged for a long time – till someone finally pointed out that it was the basic question that was wrong. It wasn’t about doing either of those things and simply ignoring the other one.
The true answer was that you needed to show your faith by doing good works, and carry out those works in the spirit of your faith.
It may not be the Kingdom of Heaven that’s your goal right now, but no matter WHAT it is, the same rule still applies.
You need to show your faith by working for your goal, and work for your goal in accordance with your faith that it can be achieved.
Don’t let anybody tell you that believing in the Law of Attraction means that’s all you have to do. A lot of people have believed that – and they’re generally the ones complaining that it doesn’t bring them what they want.
How could it? You get back what you give… and if you don’t give your commitment and creative energy, you don’t get the rewards of them!
It’s like wanting a balloon to float in the air but filling it with water instead of helium gas and imagining the Law of Gravity won’t know the difference.
You know perfectly well that wouldn’t work. You have to work with the Law of Gravity here. Fill the balloon with gas that’s lighter than air, and the balloon soars upwards instead of sinking like a stone.
So if working brings you what you want, why bother with the Law of Attraction?
Because working, on its own, is no more going to get you where you want to go than trying to use the Law of Attraction without doing any work. If it did, a hamster on a treadmill would be the richest creature on the planet.
The Law of Attraction brings you opportunities and success – provided that you put creative effort into it.
Working with the Law of Attraction means…
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Knowing what you want, and keeping focused on it no matter how many challenges you have to meet;
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Keeping a clear mental picture in your mind of successfully achieving it;
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Taking time each day to clear your mind of all distractions and listen to the new ideas and strategies your inner mind will generate for you; and
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Working with enthusiasm, energy, persistence and enjoyment, keenly aware that every step you take will bring you closer to exactly where you want to be.
Do those things consistently, and THEN see if you still believe the Law of Attraction doesn’t work for you. I’m quite prepared to bet you won’t be able to!
Posted in Law Of Attraction | challenges, clear mental picture, clear your mind, commitment, creative energy, distractions, energy, enjoyment, enthusiasm, faith, goal, inner mind, it can be achieved, Kingdom of Heaven, Law Of Attraction, law of gravity, new ideas, persistence, rewards, successfully achieving, what you focus on, work10 Easy Ways To Get Kicked Out Of Twitter
Published July 13, 2009 | Twitter has been getting tough on spammers, and others they consider undesirable… and if you indulge in behavior they consider looks suspicious, you could be next.
For anyone who wants to get kicked out of Twitter, here are 10 great ways to go about it:-
- Use bad language. We may be used to it on TV and in movies, but a lot of folks don’t like it tweeted at them. Occasionally using a heartfelt expletive is generally accepted – over-use of cuss-words isn’t;
- Tweet advertising links masquerading as replies to people who have never heard of you. Sending a reply to a tweet you like from someone you’ve started following is friendly; staking out a hashtag and “replying” the same commercial tweet to everyone who uses it is spam;
- Follow people, then, when they follow back, UNfollow them to make your friends- to-followers ratio look good. Tweeters notice that – and lots will block you;
- Get involved in quarrels. If you disagree with someone, keeping your place on Twitter could depend on doing it politely, or unfollowing the offender, and maybe even blocking them. If you start or carry on an argument, belittle or attack someone who disagrees with you, people will take sides – and they’re unlikely to pick yours;
- Use a robot to “add thousands of new followers while you sleep”. Most of them don’t work, work by following enough on your behalf who haven’t followed back to make it obvious you’re spamming, pair you up with spam and porn accounts already on their way to getting banned, or send out frequent advertising tweets with your name on them. Result? Next time you click your Twitter name, you see “Account Suspended”;
- Twit-vertize a porn site. More than enough tweeters will be offended enough that they’ll complain, and get you banned;
- Abuse TweetLater or TweetSpinner to send out advertising tweets every minute or so, 24/7. I’ve known people try that – but I haven’t known them for very long;
- Sent automatic Direct Messages to all new followers inviting them to buy your product. Direct Messages are also by default sent out as e-mail, and no-one wants their in-box full of spam. Tweeters are beginning to retaliate by immediately unfollowing anyone who sends them – some are going on to block them;
- Use a bot to send out random auto-tweets. Some people intersperse commercial tweets with them to make it look as if they’re interacting with their followers – but “breaking news” items that are two weeks old, or questions like, “What’s your favorite TV show?” (which never get an answer when anyone replies to them) fool only the very inexperienced – and the person sending them. More and more people are unfollowing and blocking people who send random tweets – and the more times you’re blocked, the greater the likelihood that Twitter will get rid of you; and
- Disrespecting the Twittersphere‘s ability and willingness to deal with people who infringe the very simple code of Twitt-iquette – tweet only what you would be happy to receive. There are now so many spammers there’s no other option. Tweeters (other than the absolutely desperate) WILL check your profile before returning follows… and many will block you if your timeline looks like spam. Those who use TweetLater’s “Vet New Followers” facility can now report spammers directly to Twitter which just one mouse-click – and if they report them also to @twitbroom, the names will be circulated for others to check out the accounts… and, if they agree they’re spam, they block them.
It can’t be emphasized too strongly that the more blocks you attract, the faster Twitter will get rid of you. It simply isn’t worth the risk.
Keeping Your Focus On The Way Ahead
Published July 8, 2009 | I’ve just had a very scary experience – and it was totally my own fault.
Why should you be interested in that? Because it serves as an example of where your focus needs to be – no matter what it is you want to do.
So, here’s what happened…
I’d set out on one of my favorite walks, through the woods between the golf course and the river – without stopping to think that after yesterday’s rain the path would be muddy, even dangerous in places.
At first everything was fine – and then I reached the part where, right at the top of a steep slope, the path narrows to a few inches. To the right there’s an even steeper slope, impossible to walk on even in good weather, with trees that are just too far away to grab a hold of… and to the left, there’s a spectacular view that’s known locally as the ravine.
It might not be much by Alpine standards, but miss your footing by an inch, and you’re going headlong down a sheer face, straight into the river below… and by the time you realize the danger that you’re in, it’s already far too late to think of turning back.
So, there I was, perched at the very summit of the walk, looking at a track that seemed impassable, and wondering what on earth I should do now.
The prospect of negotiating the narrow path ahead was terrifying me, but a quick glance over my shoulder reminded me that in all that mud getting safely back down the way I’d scrambled up would be no easier. Worse still, the very act of glancing round unbalanced me, and my arms were flailing wildy in a desperate attempt to stay upright.
My next mistake was to glance sideways, down into the ravine. There was no questioning the seriousness of the fall that any slip would cause… and thanks to the rain the river was in spate. I was not happy.
Well, I was going to have to do something, because even without trying to move forwards my feet were starting to slip… in the direction of the ravine.
There wasn’t time to beat myself up about the stupidity that had got me into this mess in the first place. I had my cell phone, but there wasn’t any point in trying to get help – it would have taken the local mountain rescue team to reach me, and I’d have landed in the river long before they could.
There was only one thing I could do. Like it or not, I was simply going to have to tackle that path.
I took a deep breath, and set out. Carefully. Slowly. One step at a time.
There wasn’t any point in looking backwards, and I didn’t dare look down. I didn’t even try to look too far ahead. All I did was focus on the next step… then the next.
After a few steps I stopped feeling quite so scared, and then I started feeling quite exhilarated. I’d come this far, just by focusing all my attention on the task in hand – the next small step I had to take… and it was working.
Before long I was over halfway through the scary part, and realizing that all I had to do to get to where I wanted was to keep on doing exactly what had worked so well already – just keep focused on the task in hand, and take one more small step.
Then I started thinking… hey, that’s how you get to any place you want to be!
Don’t look back, thinking wistfully of the security you had before you set out on the journey to the things you want to do and have, achieve and be. If it had been all that great, you’d not have felt the urge to move on in the first place, would you?
Don’t look down, at all the bad things that could happen if you don’t get safely where you want to be. What’s the point of doing that? It won’t make you any safer, or feel more secure – it’ll just take your attention from where it needs to be, and make the risk much greater.
Don’t even look too far ahead. There are moments to be inspired by the vision of a radiant new future – but in the middle of the steps you need to take to make it happen isn’t one of them.
Just keep your attention on exactly where it needs to be… on where you are and what you’re doing NOW.
Make sure it takes you a step closer to exactly where you want to be – then DO it. Focus all your physical and mental energy and all of your attention on it till you get it done, and then congratulate yourself and take the NEXT step… and the next… until you’ve reached your chosen destination.
It’s such an obvious technique most people overlook it… but it’ll take you where you want to go, as surely as it brought me safely home today.
Veggie Diet – What It Has To Offer YOU
Published July 7, 2009 | A veggie diet is widely believed to be the healthiest that you can have, but it’s often been portrayed as being faddish or boring – sometimes both.
Here’s the truth about a veggie diet – and it may surprise you.
- A veggie diet lowers your cholesterol and cuts your risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, clogging of the arteries, diabetes and some kinds of cancer, makes you less likely to have a heart attack or stroke, and has been proved able to reverse the effects of heart disease;
- A veggie diet gives your whole body a natural detox, getting rid of harmful chemicals like pesticides used in the rearing of cattle and chickens and the preservatives used in the production of their meat, and means you don’t consume those harmful chemicals in future;
- A veggie diet helps you to avoid obesity, with all the health risks and damage to your self-esteem obesity involves;
- A veggie diet gives you strength. Some of the world’s most powerful animals, such as gorillas, don’t eat meat;
- A veggie diet saves you money – LOTS of it;
- A veggie diet helps you save the planet. A United Nations report claims rearing cattle is accelerating climate change by causing 40% more greenhouse-gas emissions than ALL the trucks, cars and airplanes in the world: ;
- A veggie diet helps you ease the worldwide water shortage. It takes just 25 gallons of water to produce a pound of wheat… and 2,00 gallons to produce one pound of beef;
- A veggie diet helps you fight world poverty and feed the hungry. 750 MILLION people suffer chronic hunger, while each year farmed animals eat 760 million tons of grain;
- A veggie diet helps you to reduce world cruelty to animals. Many animals and most poultry are raised in factory-farms, where conditions are at best un-natural and at worst (which many of them are) a torture too distressing to describe here. If you wouldn’t want a guided tour of an abattoir, or to subject your dog or cat to factory-farm conditions, do you REALLY want to be responsible for doing that to ANY living creature?; and
- A veggie diet can be varied, satisfying, nourishing and totally delicious. Just browse the veggie section of your local supermarket, or google some veggie recipes, and see! (And if you STILL don’t believe you’d actually ENJOY a veggie diet, find out how you can actually re-reducate your tastes to let you LOVE the foods that are the very best for you…)
Posted in Fitness | avoid obesity, cancer, cholesterol, climate change, clogging of the arteries, damage to self-esteem, diabetes, factory-farms, feed the hungry, fight world poverty, greenhouse-gas emissions, harmful chemicals, heart attack, heart disease, high blood pressure, lower cholesterol, natural detox, obesity, pesticides, poultry, production of meat, rearing of cattle, rearing of chickens, reduce cruelty to animals, reverse the effects of heart disease, save money, save the planet, Self-Esteem, stroke, veggie diet, water chortage, worldwide water shortageComfort Zone? WHAT Comfort Zone?!
Published July 6, 2009 | If you’re interested in personal empowerment, someone’s probably already told you that you need to break out of your comfort zone.
It’s sound advice. Being in a comfort zone means staying where you’re safe. You don’t change anything… until eventually the sameness stifles you.
Problem is, most people aren’t in a comfort zone. Those seeking information to transform their lives are in a no-comfort zone, and looking for a quick way out of it!
If you’re trapped in a nightmare of debt and desperation, a drink or drug habit, an abusive marriage or a job you hate, you’re not in any kind of comfort zone.
You’re in the very opposite – a no-comfort zone… but, like being in a comfort zone, it’s so much easier to stick with what’s familiar.
We often have more choices than we think we have. We don’t notice them because it’s hard to see past the familiar… or else we just don’t trust ourselves to take them.
It’s hard to see there are alternatives to debt, remaining overweight, a job you hate, living for the next fix or remaining in a relationship that’s turned abusive… because staying in the situation is familiar. Leaving it is not.
Two qualities make leaving a no-comfort zone so hard…
- Lack of self-esteem (you’re ashamed, afraid of other people finding out, don’t know where to find help or what might happen if you try, or you believe it’s all that you deserve); and
- Lack of self-belief (you realize you could change it, but you just don’t trust yourself to get it right).
Let’s get this straight…
- You don’t deserve to live a life of guilt and misery. Whatever mistakes you’ve made, you can get over them, start over and find success and happiness. Addicts have done it. So have people in terrifying amounts of debt, homeless people, abused children, battered partners… even murderers. No matter what your circumstances, SO CAN YOU – if you’re prepared to walk away from your no-comfort zone; and
- You CAN do it. You may need to learn new skills, or work an extra job for a while, accept that a relationship is over, move away or start a program… but you can break away from your no-comfort zone, whatever kind it is. Other people have, and so can you.
Getting Out Of Your No-Comfort Zone
Here’s a simple but effective action plan for breaking out of your no-comfort zone:-
- Identify the problem, and its full scale. Be honest with yourself. How much money do you owe? How overweight are you? How often has your partner been abusing you? How many extra hours are you working without pay? (or any appropriate question);
- Decide exactly how you positively want to change it (eg, “I want to be completely free of debt and have savings of….”, or “I want a mutually loving, respectful and supportive relationship where I feel safe and valued and can make my partner feel the same”, etc.);
- What you need to do to change your no-comfort zone into one of happiness, success and inner peace; and
- What you need to be to make those changes happen. To get out of your no-comfort zone you need make some positive changes in yourself, like gaining confidence and trusting yourself to get things right;
- Improve your action plan from the point of view of someone with the qualities you’ve listed. How would you do it if you had more confidence, knowledge, self-esteem and self-belief?; and
- Smash all the mental barriers to having all those qualities. The quickest, easiest, most powerful (and inexpensive) way is with affirmations delivered straight to your subconscious mind, like Super-Charge Your Self-Belief, or Turbo-Charge Your Self-Esteem.
You can only change your situation if you change the way you see it – AND the way you see yourself. Start seeing your situation as changeable and yourself as capable of changing it, and watch your no-comfort zone transformed into success and happiness!
Getting Rid Of Twitter Spammers
Published July 3, 2009 |
The New Broom That’s Looking To Sweep Clean
Spammers haven’t taken long to set their sights on Twitter, and more and more exasperated tweeters are looking for a way of getting rid of them. The good news is that there’s a brand new “broom” looking to sweep them out of Twitter – and that YOU can help to wield it.
Types of spam on Twitter
There are two main types of spam on Twitter:-
- Over-aggressive and unwelcome selling practices; and
- Porn spam, male and female, straight and gay.
Problems caused by Twitter spammers
Aside from the irritation and distaste they cause, there are a couple of potentially very serious problems they can cause:-
- You wouldn’t want members of your family seeing some of the images the profiles link to; and
- Some people who’ve clicked on links that offer them hundreds of new Twitter followers a day have had their accounts hacked, and a stream of porn or advertising tweets sent out in their name. (Typically, they ask you for your Twitter log-in details – and that’s all they need.)
How you can recognize Twitter spam
Not everyone who’s trying to sell something on Twitter is a spammer. Here are the tell-tale signs to look for:-
- A Twitter spammer will typically be following LOTS more people than are following back. It’s normal for people who are building up their follower numbers to be following more people than are so far following them back, but with spammers the numbers are usually a long way out of balance. The most blatant one I’ve seen so far was following 2,000 people – and had 14 followers himself (and he was peddling software “guaranteed” to bring you 400 new followers every day. I kid you not);
- A Twitter spammer’s timeline doesn’t look right – and even if you’re very new to Twitter, it isn’t hard to recognize. Some post the same message over and over again, every few minutes; others have just one tweet, usually offering porn or “hundreds of new followers” software;
- Some Twitter spammers get their leads from following a trending topic, and post what they pretend is a reply to a long list of individuals. Many people genuinely have a long list of replies to post – it’s often a sign of a good Twitter follower to have, because it’s someone who likes to develop conversations with other Twitter users. The Twitter spammer’s fake replies are easy to recognize, though – they generally post the same message with the same link to everyone;
- Twitter porn spammers often have a profile or a tweet (the account has usually only one) inviting you to a site where it says you’ll “have to register to view my pics”; and
- Twitter porn spammers’ profiles generally have a provocative picture and sometimes quite explicit wording – but not always. Many of the pictures are simply glamor shots, and the more subtle ones use language that’s suggestive and inviting rather than crudely explicit. They leave no room for doubt, though, that simple friendship isn’t what they’re looking for.
Why you should do something about spammers
There are lots of reasons for doing something about Twitter spammers – the most obvious being:-
- There are lots of Twitter spammers, and their numbers are increasing every day. They’ll go on doing so as long as they can get away with it;
- The more of them there are, the more they’re going to ruin your, and everybody else’s, experience of Twitter;
- If Twitter spammers get too great a hold, the people that you’d want to interact with are simply going to get fed up and cease to use the service. That way, no-one wins; and, best of all…
- Because you CAN. There’s now a service that can deal with Twitter spammers. It works by getting the offenders blocked… and if an account’s blocked by enough people, Twitter closes it.
How you can fight back against the Twitter spammers
- DON’T accept all followers automatically. Use the Vet Followers facility in TweetLater – it takes most of the work out of checking your new followers, so you can do it with greater speed and much less effort than clicking all those links in e-mails. What’s more, in addition to “Accept”, “Ignore” and “Block”, it now includes a “Spam” button, which if you click on it both blocks the spammer and sends a report to Twitter… and they will investigate;
- DO follow @CharlesYeo AND @twitbroom. Charles Yeo runs the twitbroom service (more details in a moment), but there are two separate lists of followers, so being in touch with both will get your spammers blocked by a greater number of people and make Twitter act more quickly;
- When you find a Twitter spammer, tweet both @CharlesYeo AND @twitbroom with the spammer’s Twitter username. DO NOT include the customary “@” sign in the spammer’s username (using it would send a reply to the spammer, effectively warning them that they’re in trouble). Keep the message short enough to be retweeted to other Twitter users (leave at least 20 characters spare, if possible). Your message will go to all @Charles Yeo’s and @twitbroom’s followers, who’ll be asked to visit the spammer’s page and block it. Once the account is blocked by enough people Twitter will take action; and
- Check out the suspected Twitter spammers named in the tweets you’ll get from @CharlesYeo and @twitbroom. Twitter’s “Find People” is working only intermittently at present, so for now you’ll probably have to type www.twitter.com into your browser, then copy and paste the Twitter ID - for convenience, I keep a browser tab open at the twitter.com page, and just paste in the IDs as required, but it will be easier and faster once the “Find People” function is put right.
It only takes a few moments… and it works. A lot of Twitter spammers have already been suspended after a report to @CharlesYeo and @twitbroom… and withYOUR help they can clear out a whole lot more.
So, please, go follow @CharlesYeo and @twitbroom, and report all the Twitter spammers who start following you. You’ll be doing yourself, and all of us, a massive favor.
Letting Your Light SHINE!
Published July 1, 2009 | One of the most inspirational quotations I know comes from former South African President Nelson Mandela. It’s too long to be included in Your Daily Inspiration, but far too good not to use, so here it is.
It’s originally the work of Maryanne Williamson, but first came to many people’s attention when Nelson Mandela used it in inaugural address in 1994 as South Africa’s first black president.
He said: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us most. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and famous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in all of us. And when we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
His words shoud have the power to stir the heart – but to some they’re more of an uncomfortable challenge than an inspiration.
It’s not that they don’t want to let their light shine. Too many people don’t believe they even have one. They’ve experienced so much negativity, criticism, self-doubt and lack of hope or expectation that the idea they might be supposed to be all those good things is not the inspiration Maryanne Williamson and Nelson Mandela intended.
Instead of exciting them and igniting their ambitions, it disturbs them deeply.
It doesn’t bring them joy – they find it so uncomfortable that it’s actually a threat against their peace of mind.
I’m not asking you to take my word that you have every right, all the power, the entire duty and the whole responsibility to be those things.
Instead, I’m asking you to listen to someone who spent 27 years in jail rather than give up on all the things that he believed in. Not only did he come through that to be his country’s first black president – he’s also a man revered and loved throughout the world.
If Nelson Mandela has such faith in you, why not find out if he’s right?
If you need encouragement to believe you’re naturally gorgeous, check out Reveal Your Inner Beauty. If you don’t believe you’re brilliant, you need to raise your self-esteem. If you don’t believe you’re talented, you need to boost your self-belief. If you’re afraid you’re too inhibited or shy, you can reconnect with all your natural assertiveness and project your real, dynamic self.
Most importantly of all, if you believe the things you most want to believe or do, to have or be, are way beyond your power to achieve, check out Success Begins With YOU, or try Achieve Your Wildest Dreams… and for a free book of inspirational quotations to keep you motivated all year round, just help yourself to Your Daily Inspiration.
Nelson Mandela has real faith in you. Live up to his belief, and let your light shine!
Posted in Positive Thinking | achieve, ambitions, Assertiveness, brilliant, challenge, child of God, daily inspiration, dynamic self, famous, glory of God, gorgeous, inhibited, inner beauty, insecure, inspirational quotations, let our own light shine, let your light shine, liberated from fear, make manifest, Maryanne Williamson, Nelson Mandela, peace of mind, playing small, Self-Belief, Self-Esteem, shrinking, shy, Success, talented, wildest dreams