It feels like half of Facebook is bot

21.07.2021/01.08

Here’s a screenshot from the new members of one of my Facebook groups—actually the only public one I still have. Since Facebook lets spammers join now, we have to block them manually. Their posts don’t make it through to the group as we have safeguards there, too. But I’m not going to let them inflate, […]

Time to stop entertaining advertorial enquiries from Gmail

04.06.2021/01.06

Last month, I Tweeted that I would stop replying to advertorial queries sent to us from Gmail, since over 99 per cent of them result in no deal whatsoever. In fact, that 99 is an underestimate. One of the early (say mid-1990s to the mid-2000s) rules of the ’net was that if you didn’t […]

Despite being blatantly obvious, Facebook does nothing about thousands-strong bot nets

01.04.2021/02.51

We already know that Facebook does nothing if you want to use scripts to join groups, even if the scripts all give roughly the same answers. Apparently that’s not enough to trigger the systems at this company that’s worth almost a billion dollars (that’s a proper billion, or what the Americans call a trillion). Unless, […]

Computing in 2021: Gmail’s advertorial spammers, Facebook bots, and Twitter fatigue

25.03.2021/10.40

I’m not entirely sure I need to block out the email addresses here since they’re likely to be burner Gmail accounts, but I’ll give these spammers the courtesy they don’t deserve. As shown below, they’ve been coming for over a year; there’s a chance I may have even received them in 2019. […]

Two big reasons not to use Gmail

03.10.2020/09.14

I was absolutely shocked to learn this is how Gmail works. If I read this correctly, #Google lets more than one person use a single email address (in this case, over 200!)? How daft! Why would they do that? pic.twitter.com/KtTO6PnDEI — Jack Yan 甄爵恩 (@jackyan) September 27, 2020 PS.: This was the image linked […]

Catfished on Facebook? That’s OK, too, they’re there to provide the tools

11.06.2020/03.45

I don’t particularly have it in for Google and Facebook. I’m only pointing out the obvious: if you say your policy is x, or your product is y, then don’t deliver us z. Put it into non-electronic terms: if you sell me a car and I put it into first gear, and it instead reverses, […]

Netflix spams, Amazon doesn’t care

07.02.2020/08.24

It pays to have some ground rules when dealing with the internet. A very big one that I’m sure that you all observe is: don’t do business with spammers. If a Nigerian prince tells you he has $5 million for you, ignore him. There are tainted email lists that have been going around for […]

Verizon’s continued hypocrisy borne of pettiness

12.07.2019/08.42

Remember Tumblr, the platform owned by Verizon that I left? I left because of Verizon’s policies, of placing their corporate agenda ahead of the users. I went to NewTumbl instead—a site that Tumblr users might not know about, since Verizon has ensured that searches for its competitor come up empty. I was […]

The porn blackmail scam—ignore it if you receive it

24.07.2018/13.31

I’m not saying I can’t be conned—because by my own admission, I have been—but sometimes when you’re very sure of your position, scammers’ lies don’t work. Here’s a fascinating one that came in today, a lot more aggressive than the usual request for helping someone move millions of dollars of bullion out of the […]

I don’t do paid blog posts here (so don’t ask)

11.12.2017/00.00

I know we all get these emails from time to time, but they still annoy me. If ‘Peter’ had visited this blog, he would know that every single post since 2006 has been my own, unpaid, unsponsored thoughts. Why would I change that now? You may say it’s a fair question, and […]