Spam and its effects in today’s society

In my last post you will see I was a jerk and a lot of that was based on the fact that I thought Hans was spamming my blog, but with a personal touch. The comment was in response to me asking for opinions on my site so I could change anything that bothered my visitors when I redesign the site. He was suggesting a theme he created and offered to help me for free, the way it was written sounded a little spammish because I have seen it before in spam. The free help really bothered me, since so many spammers are just morons that know nothing about what they are pitching I viewed it as an insult, someone who doesn’t know what they are doing is offering me help. Hans apologized and I have looked at his site and I like what he has done. I love the small home and contact buttons on the left, while it is not the first time I have seen them I am jealous because I have never had a design that fit that style of presentation.

Back the topic, I was a jerk and I think I made Hans feel bad for saying anything at all. I sent him an email, commented on the blog, and changed the post because I felt so horrible. That is the real topic, the things that spammers are doing create an environment that does not allow even offer help. It was borderline spam, meaning it could have been and could not have been, there were also two of them because he didn’t know I have it set to moderate all my comments. I am pretty good at picking out spam and phishing emails, but sometimes they are really good and it is very difficult to tell. I can’t imagine how hard it is for the novice computer user and when I think about my mom using a computer in the future it makes me worry she will fall for the scams.

In just this one situation a person felt insulted (because I am petty), someone else felt bad for something he shouldn’t have, and the person that felt somewhat insulted felt bad. All because so many others have sounded the exact same way when sending spam.

Spam already costs this country thousands of dollars with work hours spent in filtering spam from their inbox, the time users waste going to pointless websites, and the administrators time to setup and maintain spam software. Sometimes I think the internet needs to be reinvented, http:// needs to be changed to web:// so we create a whole new internet where sites are moderated better, basically starting over from the beginning. This would allow us to get rid of the domain squatters by requiring proof of intent for the domains, limit spam, and just create a new standard for the way we interact online. Hell maybe even make it like pay per view; no ads, content would be categorized to keep children away from porn. Also by making it web:// the statement Web 2.0 would fit better, but then you get away from the whole technical hypertext transfer protocol.

I don’t know I just know that previous spam caused me to be a jerk and I don’t like coming off like a jerk.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.  · 461 views · 0.3% Popularity