Scam, or Really Unethical Viral Marketing?

So I got a text from a company called Everalbum claiming that someone named Ralph Mendoza recommended that I check out "my" photos on its site.

First, the only Ralph Mendoza I know is a business contact from when I was a reporter. I hardly know him beyond an interview or two.

Second, I certainly never gave permission for him or anyone else to send me text spam. Since I pay for my text usage, this could conceivably drive my bill up, therefore I'm unhappy to see unwanted solicitations through text. Also, I don't think Mendoza would send me this kind of spam. He's not that kind of guy, so this company is dragging his name through the mud.

Third, I looked up Everalbum, and it seems to be a legit company that scrapes social media, steals your photos and saves them in an album for you. As nice as that service might be, having them do it without my permission and then text me about it really irritates me.

My recommendation is to not click the link if you get this spam text, because they will steal your phone numbers and spam everyone you know. I suggest going to their FB page and giving them a bad rating if they do spam you. If they steal your contacts and send out spam to everyone you know, perhaps a lawsuit is in order... I don't know.

Comments

I've started to shut down commenting on posts older than a year, and maybe even just stuff older than a month. It's going to be a piecemeal process because Blogger doesn't seem to have a universal way of updating all the 5,000+ posts on this blog by date, so I can't just reset them all to disallow new comments at once. And with over 5,000 posts... well, I don't like going through and updating one by one, but that seems to be what I'll have to do.

Maybe that will stop the avalanche of spam I get, maybe it won't. A lot of it is posted on older posts. They still won't get through my moderation, but whenever someone attempts to post spam on an older post I'll update that post to reject new comments.

I'm hoping that after almost a year at my "new" job, I can start to re-balance my life and get back to a little light blogging, a little light Aquaman fan stuff and maybe some other stuff that fell by the wayside while I learned how to be a reporter.

Calls From Jamaica

We've been getting spammy phone calls from the 876 area code recently. To my vast amusement, some of them actually leave messages. One I listened to included a person explaining in a deep slow voice that attempted to hide his accent that I had property that needed to be claimed at the National Register and I should call to claim my property. Another was a guy who didn't even bother to hide his thick Jamaican accent telling me that I'd won the Las Vegas lottery and to call to claim my winnings.

While I really don't like nasty spammy phone calls, I'm kind of happy to get ones this amusing.

Hi, I Like Your Post...

I'm getting a TON of comment spam that pretty much all starts out like that. Never any specifics about the post and always with a link utterly unrelated to anything in the post. Anyone else getting spammed by these idiots?

Wow, The Sheer Nerve...

A scam disguised as a warning to stop being scammed!

Subject: You Need To Stop Contacting Them........For Your Own Good
From: Ms. Elizabeth Park Fowler
Reply-To: barrister_benbruce2@yahoo.com.hk

Hello,

I'm Ms. Elizabeth Park Fowler of Tampa, FL 33629., I'm a US citizen, I'm 51yrs Old. I'm one of those that took part in the Compensation in Nigeria many years ago and they refused to pay me, I had paid over $38,000 while in the US, trying to get my payment all to no avail.

So I decided to travel down to Nigeria with all my compensation documents, And I was directed to meet Barrister Ben Bruce, who is the member of COMPENSATION AWARD AUTHORITY and a Human Rights Activist (Lawyer), and I contacted him and he explained everything to me. He said whoever is contacting us through emails are fake.

He took me to the paying bank for the claim of my Compensation payment. Right now I'm the most happiest woman on earth because I have received my compensation funds amounteing to $11,000,000.00 Moreover, Barrister Ben Bruce, showed me the full information of those that are yet to receive their payments and I saw your email as one of the scam victims, that is why I decided to email you to stop dealing with those people, they are not with your fund, they are only making money out of you. I will advise you to contact Barrister Ben Bruce

You have to contact him directly on this information below.

COMPENSATION AWARD AUTHORITY
Name : Barrister Ben Bruce (Legal Practitioner And Adviser)
Email: barrister_benbruce2@yahoo.com.hk

You really have to stop dealing with those people that are contacting you and telling you that your fund is with them, it is not in anyway with them, they are only taking advantage of you and they will dry you up until you have nothing.

The only money I paid after I met Barrister Ben Bruce was just $250 for the paper works, take note of that.

Thank You and Be Blessed.

Ms. Elizabeth Park Fowler (Elizabeth)
Trustee/Treasurer, Triad Foundation Inc.
[address redacted, you can find it everywhere else anyway]
Education: BS, Business Administration
mail.planetprepaid.net

There's a slightly different version of this scam at this page, with a different lawyer name and a slightly higher amount for "the paper works", heh.

Annoyingly, the person who supposedly wrote this scam is a real person, the daughter of a philanthropist and yes, part of the Triad Foundation. The address used in the e-mail is her real address (apparently taken directly from this page, in fact), but there are other names being used as part of the scam. Still, if I were Elizabeth, I'd be really annoyed by this thing.

What, Another Linkdump?

THIS. This is why I don't buy Zachary "Sylar" Quinto as Spock. I just can't. It doesn't work for me. I hope I'll change my mind when I see him in action, but the promotional stuff so far does nothing for me.

A list from heck: 84 Comics Being Made Into Films. No, no Aquaman.

Speaking of comic films, have you got every single Fleischer/Famous Studios Superman Film? Well, now you can have them (even Japoteurs, which is often left out of modern releases due to it's racism and heavy propaganda). This may be a repeat link, but it's worth repeating because it's so cool.

Missing Space Spider! Naturally, Colbert has had some fun with the story.

LEGO Album covers. If I were more of a music collector, I think these would be more impressive to me.

How the Doctor became the Doctor.

Making Pure Chocolate, and making it easier for poor farmers to grow it.

Happiness is contagious.

I'm only posting this link because of the disclaimers. Also note the incredible spam effort of the third comment (the links have been removed, but it's still interesting to look at). I've gotten lots of spam comments similar to this, which is why I moderate comments.

Obama Headlines. Like any major event, the overall effect of seeing different newspaper headlines about it is powerful.

Speaking of powerful, it would be nice if all the local dairy farms did this and the powerful smells they emit were reduced!

Hot Dog. Maru Likes Boxes.

More LOLcat Theology: Ceiling Cat Prayer, Bow Little Human, Basement Cat Does Not Cuddle, Basement Cat Summons the Undead, and Basement Cat Summons His Legions.

And lastly, a pug for the in-laws.

Today's Links

Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed #175: Spider-Woman, Joke Names, and Jan and Dean.

I should get a paper shredder I think.

Thor Dalek.

Monks sign when sworn to silence.

There's a short story by Paul Cornell available free on-line.

The lie of the vaccine/autism link. How it started, with greed and bad science.

I want the Atlantis one.

The Bad Astronomer reviews The Mentalist and explains why it rocked.

Judgement against Spammers probably won't stop spam.

A lawman who actually believes in the law, and refuses to enforce it when there's no proof the law has been followed in giving renters fair warning.

Flying Dogs, Climbing Kittens.

Guilty Pug.

It's Monday Again Already

Happy 5th Birthday to GirlAMatic.com.

Here's a Superman Copyright FAQ that explains how the Siegels got half the Superman copyright back. For the record, since I strongly oppose the Disney-driven copyright extensions, I think my opinion on the details of this subject is best left unsaid. However, I firmly believe the Siegels and Shuster estate deserve compensation as well. Overall, I think this is a win.

Mark Evanier quoted my e-mail to him about our road trip, and linked back to me. Of more interest, he actually got a look at the ingredients of The Soup, which I wished I'd done once I learned they were available. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like it's a list from which you can duplicate the recipe. (If you're wondering what the road trip was about: Road Trip Part 1 and Road Trip Part 2.)

More on April Fool and the history of the day at the Museum of Hoaxes.

Another condemnation of Vista. As I've said before, I have no intention of ever downgrading to Vista. I'll go to LINUX first.

World's fastest internet connection 'used to dry laundry'. I like this lady's style.

Ah, uses of the internet. Yup, Eric and I do this all the time.

Fifteen years of Spam.

I'm Buffaloed.

Brian Wood tells about the inspiration for DMZ "Friendly Fire".

This is just sick. Putting seizure inducing graphics on a forum for sufferers of epilepsy is the kind of crime that should be punished with prison for a few years.

For the in-laws: sand pug.

And lastly, I've been e-mailed by a friend to ask if I will be posting when/if Eric gets called in for Jeopardy. I can make no promises. I figure that I'll post only when an air date is set for an episode he appears in, and not until. Lots of reasons for that, not the least of which is that things sometimes change at the last minute, so if I post that he got called, and for some reason he doesn't actually play, I wouldn't feel like explaining it. And of course, should he get on the show and play, we won't be telling anyone how he did until after the show airs.

Hey, More Links

Still trying to catch up...

Fighting Spam and digitizing books. Check out reCAPTCHA, including the ability to start adding words too.

Keith Topping's Doctor Who Fan Phrasebook Part 2.

Ah, funny ads. But even better than the ads themselves was the coverage on the local news station, that decided to make their own "overreacting weather reporter". It was great.

School Libraries. I don't know about other folks experiences, but my High School library sucked pretty hard. I spent hours in both of my Middle School and Elementary School libraries, but only entered the High School library when required.

Roomba owners love their robots. But then, I name my cars and computers, so I can't really talk.

LEGO Endless are very cool.

Sputnik - One Man's Dream. Also, read Laika by Nick Abadzis if you can. It's excellent. Checked it out from the local library.

Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed #123, Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed #124, Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed #125, and Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed #126.

Wil Wheaton talks about an asteroid.

Handbags of Horror. Expensive and Ugly.

Best Spam Subject Line This Week

"You have received a greeting card from a Worshipper" WOOHOO! I'm being worshipped!

Links and Rant

Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed #73. I'm constantly amazed that they keep coming up with new legends to talk about.

The Beat on swiping.

And there's more on the Fantagraphics store, which I'm going to have to figure out how to get to soon. I may not like all of Fantagraphic's stuff, but I'm going to have to check it out, at least.

Erik Larsen on his love of Oz. He takes a couple of digs at comics I like, but it's otherwise an ok column.

And to counter Larsen's limited view of Oz, I'll direct people to Dorothy of Oz to read the news about the calendar being cancelled by Diamond, although Chapter 7 is still on track. Looking forward to Chapter 7, the last two chapters were spectacular.

Cthulhu parsnip.

Ooooh, Scrabble Benches. I want.

And lastly, I had a TON of poker spam in my comments this morning. I deleted a bunch of comments without looking too closely, and I may have deleted legit comments because I was so peeved at the poker spammers. I somehow really doubt there was anything legit, I just don't get that many real comments, but just in case: if you did post something since yesterday afternoon and it hasn't shown up, you might want to post it again.

And I also wanted to rant about the comment spammers, so this gave me an excuse. (Rant on) Can't they figure out that I'm not going to post their crap? ARGH! The ones I really hate are the "Wow, nice site! http://spamscamsite.com" comments. You pay me a generic compliment, and expect me to post your link? Worse, you usually post about 50 of them at once, all on posts I made two years ago? I HATE COMMENT SPAM! ARGH! (rant off) It's funny, every time I think, Hey, maybe I can stop moderating my comments, I haven't gotten any spam in awhile, I suddenly get another batch of clearly automated comment spam.

*sigh*