All of us have endured the endless onslaught of Spam for a long time and there doesn’t seem to be an end to it in sight.
In the last few months I am getting ‘invitations’ from people I never heard of to join web sites of dubious value and motives.
First it was the invitation to visit ‘my Refriendz page and see my latest photos.’ I blogged about this a while back.
But now it’s a flood from Refriendz, FriendsClub, Question It, etc and of course Grouply. I expect others will soon follow. It makes no difference, it’s all Spam to me.
I am not sure exactly how these ’social’ sites work and I really don’t care to find out, other than they annoy folks like me who do not want those spammy emails.
But Grouply really worries me. The concept sounds good, get all of your Groups emails on one web page. There is another way to get them all in one place, folks. Download the messages to an email program or to Gmail! That way you don’t compromise your Yahoo login and password by giving it to some website!
You say, well if some fool wants to give up his or her logging credentials that’s their problem. Guess what, it could be your problem and my problem. All it would take is for some sneaky soul to scrape his Grouply site to a blog and your email address and mine are exposed to the world.
If you have a Yahoo Group and you don’t want your Group posts on Grouply you can stop it. Just use the information here to keep your members from belonging to Grouply if you wish. Tell Grouply to leave your Group alone
Once you enter your Group’s owner email, you get a code to enter and then you can set the controls to allow or prevent Grouply from taking control of your Group.
Now Yahoo is trying to get in on the invitations. They call theirs ‘Connections’. In all fairness, they don’t attempt to have users send an invite to everyone in their address book, but some of these ‘Connections’ are a tad dubious.
I just wish these sites would leave those invitations, connections or what ever they want to call them, alone and not keep adding to the Spam in our Inboxes!
Martha
I really like to receive newsletters; at least some of them. At one time I did think about doing a newsletter, but decided against it because knowing me, after awhile I would just stop sending them. If I had folks that had subscribed, I like to think this might have disappointed them.
I subscribe to a number of newsletters that I really like. If you are at all curious which ones you can read about it on the newsletter page on Martha’s Web. I try to keep this page updated as all good things come to an end and so do newsletters.
Another reason I don’t write a newsletter is because I don’t want to give wrong information about stuff. In a newsletter (not on my newsletter page) I read some stuff about how to fix a problem with Outlook. Now I am no expert by any means, but this was basic stuff and the ‘fix’ was totally wrong!
I sometimes get really annoyed about folks who continually bad-mouth products I use and really like. I have discontinued two newsletters for that very reason. One insinuated if I use Microsoft Front Page to make my website I have ‘bad’ code on the site. I would challenge that person to find the ‘bad’ code on my site! True I remade it using Expression Web, but it didn’t have bad code before then. I have seen bad code on sites made with DreamWeaver which is what the newsletter editor was saying everyone should use. Another kept bad-mouthing Microsoft Vista to the point I just unsubbed for that reason alone. These folks are ‘trashees‘, and so I left their cyber missives.
Most of the time I learn good stuff from my newsletters. But one thing I have noticed; they are all trying to get me to buy stuff. Generally it is software, usually security software. I don’t mind that as everyone needs to pay the bills. I just ignore most of it as I have all the software I need. I do notice the fact that some of them are insinuating what I have is not the best available.
Again, they are just trying to make some $$ but what they are pushing may NOT be the best! So while I really enjoy my newsletters I am aware that a really good newsletter takes a lot of time and work to keep up with new trends, new and good software, accurate information about ‘fixes’ and it needs to go out to subscribers on a regular basis. (There are some exceptions to the regular basis. If the subscriber knows up front the newsletter will arrive once in awhile and not on a schedule, then forewarned is forearmed.)
Since lately I can’t even post on a regular basis to this blog, I suspect my decision to not have a newsletter is the right decision.
Martha
I never cease to be amazed at how stupid some people can be or at least how stupid their remarks can be.
I still take my local newspaper although I am not sure for how much longer. Every Saturday there is a section called ‘Cheers and Jeers’. Folks write in to ‘cheer’ someone for a good deed or a happy thing and some write in to ‘jeer’ someone for a bad or stupid thing.
Today there were a few ‘jeers’ that fall into the ‘where have you been hiding, under a rock?’ category.
One numskull is jeering the airlines for ‘price gouging’. I guess this turkey does’t have a car or he would know gas is way expensive these days. Then again, maybe he hasn’t figured out that airplanes need fuel to fly!
Then there was the guy who wants the car companies to quit running ads and ruining his TV programs. Guess he hasn’t figured out those ads are what makes his viewing programs for free! Where has he been hiding? Ads have been on TV for over 50 years, has he just now noticed? (I will admit some of those ads are obnoxious, but most TV remotes do have a mute button!)
Now comes the corker, the guy who wants our elected officials to put a limit on how many babies people can have, just like China does. I wonder if he would like to have a Communist government like China does. We have ‘over-population’ according to him. I suspect he doesn’t like kids.
Some days I just need to blow off some steam; this is one of those days.
Martha