Bad Behavior behaving badly

I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times that I have gotten angry enough to post a rant on my blog – but this certainly qualifies as a rant.

Bad behavior is apparently some type of plugin or server program that protects your blog from spam comments. Whatever it is, it has blocked me from viewing legitimate sites like Miche Fortin’s blog and other blogs that I have been referred to. And when I tried to track down the issue and report it to the owner of this “helpful” plugin – I was asked to pay for the privilege of contacting his support line – and was blocked by Bad Behavior itself from reaching his contact us page!

The error message supposedly gives you a code and invites you to fix the problem yourself. But in following those instructions and links I never get to a page that asks for my code. I tried to get to the programmer’s blog – but I’m blocked from contacting him by the same type of error message. I tried to connect with his support site – which takes me to a paypal screen so I can pay him to report the problems with his program!

I run a clean computer with AVG security software. I’m using IE7 with security privileges wide open. I’ve dumped my cache, my temporary files and done just about everything I can think of – with no results. I continue to get this error message when I go to those sites.

I am a 12 year online veteran and I don’t often encounter something that boggles me, but this fits that category. The error message suggests I use Firefox – but I will NOT be forced into a choice I don’t want to make. Is that the purpose of this “security software”?

I am calling upon the site owners to stop using this software. I don’t know who you think you are blocking, but if other IE7 users who are running anti-spyware and anti-virus software cannot get to your site – how many visitors are you losing? Who are you blocking with this software?