I don’t know who Adam Croot is. I’ve never met him, spoken to him, or – as far as I’m aware – set eyes on him. He’s probably a decent fellow – kind to his mother, careful with litter, etc. – but he’s really starting to get on my wick.<\/p>\n
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It seems other people are starting to despise him<\/a> as well, and with a lot more vitriol than that which I can muster.<\/p>\n So why is he the target of hatred for myself and other people, none of whom know him from… well… Adam?<\/p>\n Well, for some reason, there are quite a few sites on the internet which, due to poor programming, spontaneously redirect you to Adam’s Twitter feed<\/a>. To any non-nerds it looks for all the world like Adam is some kind of ‘elite’ techno-criminal who’s managed to hack into Twitpic and Photobucket, and other affected sites to make them forward to his site. This is not the case.<\/p>\n A bit of poking around in source code reveals that the sites in question are trying to open an <iframe> containing the page https:\/\/api.twitter.com\/undefined#blahblahlotsofstuffhere<\/em><\/strong>. Since Adam’s Twitter name is ‘undefined<\/strong>‘, this redirects you to his Twitter feed.<\/p>\n The <iframe> is generated on-the-fly by the Javascript code in the file http:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/anywhere.js<\/span><\/strong>. This script is part of the Twitter @Anywhere API<\/a> – a framework for integrating Twitter apps into your site. It seems that through a combination of bad programming and poor error-checking, the code is trying to create an <iframe> using a variable which has not been defined, hence it uses undefined<\/em> instead, hence you get redirected to Adam’s Twitter feed. This has nothing to do with Adam, who I imagine is probably starting to get sick of random strangers verbally abusing him.<\/p>\n