1boringperson

Today's "winning" spam subject:  **SPAM** YOU HAVE WON!!!

Gee, that couldn't possibly be a scam, could it?

My apologies for not posting much to LJ any more.  (Not that I did a lot to begin with.)  I'm getting most of my narcissistic needs met on Facebook and the proper blog I've started.  I still come here to read daily, though, so just call me lurker.

Today I got a spam titled "The Internet's best-kept secret."  It's likely I've gotten such a message before, but didn't think about it at the time:  there are no secrets on the Internet!  Putting anything on the Internet is quite the opposite of a secret.  (Yeah, I know what they meant, but still....)

It's kind of scary that I got the exact same score as dvandom, from whom I got this bleme. I started off strong, but quickly found myself going "huh?" and having to guess at answers.

Spammers are getting better with their titles. Today an e-mail titled "Insurance Advisors Discover UFOs" made it through to my inbox. I knew it was spam, but I still glanced at the contents. I was disappointed, yet unsurprised, to discover the message had nothing to do with the title. :-)

I should check my Gmail account more often. I set one up solely for this LiveJournal account. Replies to comments and journal entries sent by LJ automatically get forwarded to my "real" e-mail account. Everything else -- which is usually nothing -- waits there until I bother to log in.

So today I found an e-mail from just over a month ago:

I was just browsing the 'net and found your Manheim Steamroller-related blog entry: http://1boringperson.livejournal.com/6666.html and I think you may be of some help to me. I'm reaching out to you on behalf of [a company I'm not going to advertise] regarding the release of 'Yanni Live! The Concert Event' on DVD and CD. Since you blogged about Manheim Steamroller, I thought that you might be interested in posting the press release or a review of the DVD or CD on your blog?

I've never listened to Yanni. I knew pretty much nothing about him before I got this, which made me read his Wikipedia entry. Okay, so his music and Mannheim Steamroller's -- which they didn't even bother to spell right -- are both described as "New Age." I listened to some snippets on iTunes. Some of his stuff is okay, but I don't think it's much like Mannheim Steamroller.

But wait, it gets better:

You seem like a reputable influencer, so I think you'd be a big help to us.

Yeah, me and my army of one . . . . Oh, look, I've got another friend. Okay, me and my army of two friends. Yeah, I carry such weight on LiveJournal.

You know, if they're going to go to the trouble to search for blog posts just vaguely related to what they want to advertise, you think they could take a second to look at the user's profile to see if it's even worth spamming them.

I debated whether to list my e-mail account or not in my profile. It's been several months and this if the first spam I've gotten, so I don't regret the decision of doing so. Yet.

According to a BBC news story, eBay is launching its own context-sensitive ad service. Ads will direct surfers to auctions relevant to the content of the page on which the ad appears. Does this mean I'll finally stop seeing an eBay ad on every single page of Google results, regardless of what search terms I used?

Domain names that look like they'd have smutty content, but don't:

• www.bigassfans.com
• www.penisland.net
• www.whorepresents.com

No, really! Honest! (Doesn't mean your work/school filters won't block them, though.)