Haven’t had my coffee yet.

Constant vigilance. And caffeine.

You have the barest FB I’ve seen.

No wall
No info
No photos

I sent you a friend request. not.

That’s the real danger of spam. The primary line of defense there is not to click on anything that comes with spam, but some viruses can disguise themselves as messages from people you know.

Aside from that, it’s like billboards by the highway. They get annoying sometimes, but aren’t really damaging you.

The spam industry thrives because unlike conventional advertising the cost of contact is microscopic, so even the world’s shittiest return ratios can put you in positive cash flow. Imagine what highways would have looked like years ago if putting up a billboard cost nothing.

It’s probably why spammers don’t sweat being annoying either.

I get a lot of legitimate ads from real companies (I order online a lot), but they come with “opt outs” that seem to work. My wife loves reading these things, so her e-mail looks like that thing you get in the mail filled with little newsprint ads. We get those too, but the recycle bin is right there on the way back from the mailbox.

These people must not have too much respect for their customers, and I am perfectly ready to return the favor.

As I approach 65, both my email and snail mail are carpet bombed with marketing for old farts, people telling me about insurance, mortgage refi, medicines, etc. Many of these are disguised to look like official communications, and a lot of them are in Spanish, no doubt due to my surname.

Your counters to this activity are clever, and no doubt effective, but most people using home computers aren’t sufficiently computer literate to use these strategies. Besides, it puts the onus on protecting himself on the victim, not on the perpetrator.

Legitimate businessmen and marketers should realize these creeps are hurting their businesses too, by undermining consumer confidence. They need to play a more active role in policing their own ranks, or lobbying the authorities to do so.

Unfortunately, I can’t just “disappear” it, since e-mail I want to see sometimes gets swept into the filter. I have to go through the Junk file. But at least I can grab huge swathes of crap and delete it all at once.

A common theme lately is spam disguised as important messages from the IRS, BBB, Intuit, and other real places. Often the mail is “salted” with links to actual and legitimate websites. When something is moved to my Junk file, it shows up in pure HTML format, with no graphics and the URLs right out there, so it’s easy to spot the fakeouts.

What I can’t figure out is what these people are thinking. How many people frantically open something they think is from the IRS, find a Viagra ad or something, and think “boy, how clever of them. I’ll buy something there.”

I think they just lie. They have their own way of finding out who you are, perhaps through connections I have in common, and then they take advantage of them.

Like most spam and junk mail, you don’t normally get the opportunity to politely decline. It just shows up.

There’s a big difference between taking your money and asking for it.

It’s reassuring that a lot of groups and people get all over these outfits if they get a bit too big for their britches. The “Army of Davids.”

Somehow, the idea this unprecedented intrusion into our private lives is merely to provide a marketing methodology for the Corporate Overmind is supposed to be more reassuring than the fact the government wants to know what I’m doing every minute of the day. I guess that their just using this data for advertising and sales purposes is supposed to make it all right. As if advertising and marketing were respectable activities for decent human beings.

At least, government violation of privacy is something we can understand, we have historical examples, literary speculations. We can guess at their motives. A tyrannical government is something you can vote out of office, or even join an insurrection against. This, you’re not even allowed to criticize without risking being called a Communist.These people are trying to figure out ways to screw us we can’t even conceive of yet. Not even they are sure how they’re going to screw us, but they’re still busily erecting the infrastructure to do so. Business doesn’t want to take any man’s liberty, it just wants to take every man’s money.

But I guess its OK. No one is putting a gun to our heads, right? We can always “set the privacy settings”. Sheeeeit. I guess it’s just private enterprise wanting to “serve you better”, “fill your needs”, “bring us all together”. What magnificent horseshit.

If someone you know says “yes,” there you are on the system.

Needless to say, I advise my family and others not to do this.

I have a grand total of 15 people on my friends list. I have turned down even some people I like (usually relatives) to keep that list short, particularly people already on my wife’s list. I hope they understand it’s not personal.

Some people seem to think they gain Buddhist merit or something by having an immensely large friends list. Go figure.

There are many, many models for forums and blogs. Some blogs have no comment function at all. Most require some form of registration for anyone wishing to participate or comments. Most have their boards wide open for read-only access, although some (like here) have special areas requiring registration.

For one writing forum, my price of admission to the higher levels was a writing sample to be judged by the moderators.

Registration is often wide open too, mostly serving to limit fakery and spammers, but a number of boards limit it. These boards often “open” registration for brief periods, then close it again. Policies for revoking privileges and banning vary immensely across the web.

Many forums and boards have sponsors or take advertising. Amazon is a common advertiser. The board is paid by Amazon for purchases made through their links (no ding to the purchaser), and many bloggers are quite open about it.

Frankly, I don’t notice the ads for the most part, except those that do something annoying, like start a movie on me. This does not endear me to their product.