SEO scams, and two outfits to avoid

Recent events have reiterated how a lot of the SEO profession—I’d say almost all of it, except for a tiny sliver of people who really know what they are doing—is a crock. The good news is you can confirm which ones are the crooks by seeing who had posted lies about me. Usually they write […]

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Your preferences mean nothing to Google or Microsoft

I could just repeat my post from January 26. Let’s face it, Google is a notorious spammer, with a failing search engine, and an advertising business that’s a decent negligence lawsuit away from collapsing. It was 2011 when I showed everyone that your opt-out settings in Google Ads Preferences Manager were meaningless. Today, your email […]

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Confused Google doesn’t understand email preferences

As if to prove my point about lies, Google spammed me right after my last post. In its footer:     No, I didn’t. I logged into Google to see my settings. Sure enough:     As I always say, when it comes to computers, I’m right, they’re wrong. I have a better memory. I […]

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Are there a lot Gmail users who get their address wrong, more than any other service?

Kurt and I have very different brains, if you read this thread that I jumped in on. I am sure he is right on how things should work. Get me talking about spacing and spelling, and I’d be in the same boat. Or the use of the word billion. I have my ideas on all […]

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I can empathize with the 500-mile email problem

Big thanks to Petra on Mastodon for this one. Don’t discount us non-techs. When we come to you, we’ve often done a lot of testing first before sounding the alarm. And often we are right. Just like I was right with Vox when I could only get a compose window on select days over three […]

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Instagram scammers are next-level lazy (and greedy)

This was somewhat disappointing.    This chap contacts me, seemingly wanting permission to repost our Instagram images. His personal info has been removed. Hello there, We have reviewed your page and we truly loved your work!    We’d like to repost your pictures on our profile. Our account is [redacted] and we have over 200.000 […]

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What I do when someone uploads my private information on to Facebook

I can’t be the only person who does this. This is one of the few things that I do on Facebook. Removing off-Facebook activity is another.        1. Let me check my Facebook advertising preferences. Who has been uploading my private information to Facebook without my permission? Hmm, Ramp, @rampcard, that’s new. I’ve […]

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My first tech post in a while: how I use my social-computing time

Refreshingly, I’ve noticed that my more recent blog posts haven’t been about Big Tech as often. I haven’t changed my views: the ones I’ve stated earlier still stand, and Google and Facebook in particular continue to be a blight on democracy and even individual mental health.    A lot of the posts were inspired by […]

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Baseless threats

A couple of years ago, friends in Wellington, who own a business—let’s call it X—were approached by a US company with the same name, though in a slightly different industry.    They wanted my friends to give up their page name facebook.com/x to them, and suggested that they should be facebook.com/xnz.    No suggestion of […]

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Dear Gmail user: your industry has worn me down

After three messages I decided I would answer one of those Gmail users asking about advertorial. And from now on I’m just going to copy and paste this to anyone else asking, ‘Why won’t you answer me?’ Dear [redacted]: Sorry, this is why I haven’t answered you (and this is not because of you, but […]

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