Julie Barrett is a freelance writer and photographer based in Plano, TX.

The unsolicited sales pitches never end

Fresh when it gets here from Julie Barrett
Thursday, August 20, 2009


The upside of technology: Anyone can reach you easily.

The downside of technology: Yeah, you guessed it.

Spent a couple of days recovering from a spam attack at one site I administer. I'm pretty good at keeping up with the stuff, but some bot dropped in and posted 21 messages. They all got caught in the mod queue, but that was along with about a dozen other active accounts that may or may not have been created by the same spammer.

Then came the Twitter spam. I can almost always tell the spam accounts - they follow within minutes after a post. I get follows (and do follow people) during a hashtagged conversation, but these were all bots with avatars in need of clothing. I'm not a prude, but when you have a butt that big, cover it up. Seriously. I went through my followers list today and blocked a bunch of spammer types whose follow notices somehow didn't get to me. All gone. I've also blocked a couple this week who suddenly turned into spammers.

Then the phone started to ring. The lady asked for Paul, then hung up when I said he wasn't home. Reported to the FTC. I Googled the number and it's attached to all sorts of odd calls. A few minutes later the phone rang again. Same number. They hung up. Two more calls this afternoon, but both people I actually wanted to talk to.

Then there's the educational spam. I think someone trolled the DI list at Yahoo Groups, figuring everyone on the list HAD to be a teacher. I get teacher spam. Sheesh.

I wish it would just all go away.

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