Rispon Avenue

In my rant about spam on my last post, I reminded myself of another spammy issue that I’ve been meaning to write about.

I’ve noticed a growing trend, maybe it’s due to getting closer to the holiday season and what not, but I’ve noticed more and more emails in my Inbox which are little more than spam… no wait, they are spam, but they are spam from companies that I am already affiliated with in some way, or have purchased from in the past, or have some sort of rewards card with or something like that. In some cases the promoted items or services aren’t from companies I’ve dealt with directly, but more a cross-promotion sort of thing.

As with BT, I don’t actually have a phone line with them anymore, but I did a few years ago, and I’m still getting spammy messages from them about upcoming deals on BT home phones and so on. Presumably if I liked the business, I would have stayed with the business, so if I don’t use their services anymore, shouldn’t I not have to put up with them? It’s not just them, either, telecoms companies are pretty bad with the whole spamming thing, probably because there’s so much competition in the field. I’m happy with my provider at the moment, so no, I don’t want your telephone system, I’ll stick with the one I’ve got, thanks.

It’s the same with internet connections, be they broadband, ADSL, or SDSL, the company always thinks that they can trick you into upgrading to a more expensive package. Its sort of insulting, I mean, I’m on a very high downloads per month package as it is, and I don’t go anywhere near my limit most months, so why would they send me emails on an almost weekly basis trying to get me to upgrade.

And yet, one of the most frustrating aspects about all of this is that to get off these mailing lists you have to follow link after link, and they are always tucked in the most out of the way parts of the emails or webpages that you go to, and you often find that they’ve sneakily altered the usual button set-ups, so you have to click on the left button, which is normally the ‘Cancel’ button. Anyway, that’s enough out of me for now, on this topic anyway.

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Now that I’m feeling better and am able to blog again, I’ve got to deal with the spam that’s been building since I was away.

It’s insane how much of it can build up in just two weeks! I have to say, it makes me so damn frustrated with the idiots who spam my blog, even though I know they are only doing it because they are paid to, and okay, sure, things are tough for a lot of people at the moment, but come on, stop spamming everyone! To those who pay people to spam blogs like mine, you are so petty, your advertising methods are pathetic, and you aren’t going to sell your stinking prescription drugs and so on.

Gahhhh! I’ve not got a lot of energy in me at the moment, so to have to deal with all this spam is all the more irritating. I’m not just complaining over nothing, I’ve got over 200 spam comments to go through… that’s an insane amount of spam, and now they are getting more stupid. They are these really dumb jokes with the links to drugs or crap just stuck at the bottom. For instance, and this is the latest spam comment I’ve gotten rid of as spam – there’s about ten pages to go through, so I’m doing a little at a time – and this is a quote… “Fresh joke! What weighs 909 kg (2,000 pounds for all of you inefficient, non-metric “people”) and is bare to the bone? A skeleTON!!!”

Oh my goodness. Not only do I have to go and delete all this crap, I’m now subjected to some of the stupidest jokes I’ve ever heard. The only way these jokes could be anything less than crap is if they were told to you by a child still in single digits. They have a right to silly jokes, it’s like their territory, but to have spammers leaving this stuff there is just… just too much.

Usually I feel the need to be somewhat polite to these people, to be appreciative of the fact that they probably only do this job because they’ve not been able to get something better paying, but I’m sick and that gives me the right to be a grouchy… So… spammers, get the effing hell off of my blog!

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Want to know something amazing? Really? How bout the fact that I just found 119 spam comments waiting for me when I sat down to post…

A new record… 119 spam posts all waiting for me to Approve, Spam, Delete, Edit, Quick Edit, or Reply… Yeah, I think I know what I’ll do there. I always mark it all as spam, and then usually I delete it all, but now I’m thinking of leaving it there for a month and seeing how many spam comments I have sitting there!

I was going to write more about the mortgage market news, and what it’s up to. You know, current prices on mortgage deals and the like. Something that did surprise me was the move back towards the more ‘high risk’ end of mortgages, as in the bad credit mortgage loans and whatnot. I pretty much hate the whole ‘credit’ industry. It’s been a shockingly good way for a few to make money, and a great many to bleed money out their you-know-what. That’s why there are so many of those cash for home businesses, and that’s a sad thing, if you ask me.

Spam and mortgages… seems to go together in a way. Constant source of irritation and stress, and the best news you can get about it is that it’s over! :lol: The sad thing is that all this spam is unavoidable, there are so many blog posts out there about hatred of spam, or the unfortunate amount of cheap labour employed to spam Wordpress blogs. There are ways of fighting it, but when you just want to jump on your blog and blog, well, you don’t really want to go through too much to actually get to why you were there in the first place.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. All you Russian spammers, I’m sincerely hoping you get a better job soon. I know what you do much suck, suck pretty bad, and I bet you get paid a pittance for it, too, and really, it’s not your fault so much as the moron who hired you to spam Wordpress blogs with links to their stupid website that sells pharmaceuticals illegally. So, to all those spamming my blog, I wish you better luck with your next job! :)

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Well, hotmail’s spam blocker, anyway. I mean seriously, you won’t stop scam after scam, but I try and get a verification email and that just can’t be let through!?

I got a comment on my blog from someone who said they saw the site on Technorati, so I went over and decided to join up – looks like an awesome site, actually! – and ‘claim’ my blog. All was going well, save having to find a user name took a few tries, until it got to verification time. There was a little message at this point saying if you didn’t get the message, check this FAQ. Over I went, thinking smugly that I was just filling in time, that my email account wasn’t one of those frustrating ones which wouldn’t let this process occur, nooooo, of course not!

I have a Hotmail account that I use for all non-work stuff. The company I work for have a very strict policy about non-work related emails, it’s insane. Anyway, because I’ve had this Hotmail account for about eight, nearly nine, years, I don’t much fancy using anything else. Seems fair enough, right? Anyone notice how the free Hotmail accounts stopped giving you the option to ‘block’ some time ago? Well, I get a heck of a lot of spam and phishing scam emails as a result, and I can deal with that, at least they still go to the Junk box.

But this verification email is just gone, lost, never to be seen in my Inbox, and I’m really annoyed. I wanted to join this site, but now the chances of that seem rather diminished. All I can hope is that some nice person will read this, and post me the email address the verification link comes from, so I can add it in Hotmail as a contact, and then I’ll get the email! So that’s still really annoying, but nice to know people are reading my blog!

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Will they ever learn? Can they learn? Can it be soon? I hope so… in the mean time I shall continue to complain about them.

Spam got it’s title originally from a sketch by the Monty Python crew, where a cafe menu included spam in every dish. It doesn’t take a lot of brain power to see how this was translated into the title for obnoxious morons sending you reams of crap. For instance, I’ve spoken of my insurance issues lately, that I have had to renew my home insurance… well now of course, I’m getting spam emails about ‘have you decided which carrier to go with for your insurance? We’re the best, blah, blah, blah’

I got news for you, spammers, one, I’m not stupid. A quick Google search reveals that this so called excellent insurance company is non-existent, and two, you’re spamming! Who in the name of all things good is going to base their insurance choice on who sent them an email because they mentioned the word insurance on a blog!? This company didn’t rate a mention anywhere, not any home insurance news sites, nor forums, nor a proper website of your own! Bah!

It’s funny what is spammed about, too. For instance, this is the first time insurance has been spammed to me. I do, however, see a horrific amount of comments left on my blog, spamming the sale of non-over the counter drugs, and viagra. Lately my spam has taken a turn for the worse, and it’s become about geriatric pornography. I so wish that was a joke, I really, really do. But it’s not. My blog gets around two spam comments each day, and lately they have become walls of text, dotted with disturbing references and hyperlinks. Wherever you are, spammers, I hope a can of spam miraculously hits you in the head for putting so much spam on my blog!

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