On Thursday, I suddenly began to receive about ten friend requests an hour for my personal Facebook page. Since I had intentionally set this to "private," this was something new and surprising. As I have explained in a humorous way, I have two Facebook accounts related to my name. One is a public page maintained by B&H Publishers and the other is my personal account.

A few months ago, I went through the painful process of defriending 5000 people in order to keep my personal Facebook page for my friends, neighbors, and family. I reduced the number down to about 200 people and set the account to "private," at least until Facebook eliminated that option. Today, the option that I selected no longer exists-- it was just dropped and my account made public. I am glad to be public with the 7000 people who are on my public page, but I don't think my personal page should be forced into the open.

In the last few days, I have received hundreds of spam Twitter direct messages from my Twitter friends. Many of them were quite, shall we say, graphic. Others are just the normal foolishness.

Here is the direct message I have sent out many, many times the last few days:

You have been phished. Pls change (and better protect) your password so you won't send out these direct messages. Thx.

Let me say a few things so you might avoid this.

I am a bit of a wonk when it comes to theology, and I like a good top ten list. So, when Christianity Today's Collin Hansen does a "top ten theological story" list, I think it is worth sharing. And, since I am now a contributing editor for CT, it seems only right that I use large portions of their copyrighted text in my blog posts. ;-)

Collin gets it (mostly) right. You can read his full list here. Below some of the stories and some of his comments. My comments are in italics after his. In order to avoid a nasty letter from the CT attorneys and a rebuke from editor Ted Olsen, I am not reproducing all of it on my blog, so be sure to go to the magazine website and read it in full.

Here is his list with my comments:

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.