Weird requests for blog guest posts

Over the last few weeks I've been inundated with weird requests from people offering to write guest posts on my blogs. The following is typical of these requests:

I'm getting in touch with you because I'm interested in writing an article
for your blog. I came across your blog post khanya.wordpress.com while
writing for a website on hospitality management - specifically the field's
trend towards sustainability design. During my research, I've found that
incorporating green aspects to hotels, restaurants, and other service
industries has not only contributed to a healthier planet but in some
cases increased revenues.

Please let me know if you'd be interested in an article about both the
design and/or business aspects of sustainable design. Thanks, and I look
forward to hearing from you soon.

To begin with I just deleted them, but then they started sending me reminders, and asking for my response.

So I replied to a couple of these reminders, and asked for a sample of their proposed guest posts, and there was no response to that at all.

Has any one else been getting these offers?

Why would people offer to write a guest post, then remind you of the offer, and then when you take them up on the offer and ask to see the guest post, just not respond?

Are these people who have so much time on their hands that they have nothing better to do than waste other people's time be generating needless correspondence?

Or are they just harvesting e-mail addresses for the purpose of spamming? If that's the case, it seems a lot of trouble to go to -- to insert the name of the blog and all.

Or is it some kind of hidden scam, like the messages I used to get a year or so ago inviting me to a conference in some US city and in Dakar, Senegal?

After getting several of those, I tried to find more about what it was about by sending enquiries asking for further information about these conferences, but none was forthcoming. I assume that the conferences were all bogus, but I wonder why someone would go to the bother of sending out invitations to bogus conferences. They don't seem to be looking for any kind of response, because they never respond to the responses.

Another similar thing seemed to come from one persistent guy who called himself or herself Laure Norman. He said he had important information for me. Eventually I asked what the important information was, and the reply was that the important information was that there was important information. In the end I set up my e-mail program to simply bounce back anything received from that source, and I now see that my ISP (whose addresses this "Laure Norman" impersonated) is now marking it as spam at the server, so it never reaches me.

What puzzles me about all this, though, is what's in it for the people who do it. They're not asking for money, so there is no obvious scam involved. Does it give them some kind of satisfaction to waste other people's time and bandwidth?

E-mail is becoming erratic and dysfunctional

It looks as though spammers are beginning to succeed in making e-mail useless.

Several people have told me recently that e-mail that I send to their Gmail addresses ends up in their spam box. That is something new. One of the things that I thought was good about Gmail in the past was that one never had to check the spam box, because there were so few false positives. But now it seems that one will have to look in the spam box for mail. And also, when sending mail to anyone with a Gmail address, also send a text message to say "Did you get my e-mail? If you didn't, please check your spam box."

But when I tested it by sending a message to my own Gmail address, it came through OK without going to spam. 

I am quite unable to send e-mail to people who have iburst addresses though. It doesn't even reach their spam box, it just bounces right back to me. The only way to communicate with them is through a direct message on Facebook, or SMS.

Oh well, I think I'm going to have to start buying stamps again.

Cairns, Queensland, spam capital of the world?

Is the town of Cairns, in Queensland, Australia, vying for the title of Spam Capital of the World?

It sure seems like it, to judge from the number of spam comments about it people keep trying to post on my blogs.

I always delete them before anyone sees them, so I don't know why they bother, but it makes me wonder. It must really be a crummy dump if they have to pay spammers to publicise their town.

Still, I suppose being Spam Capital of the World must be better than remaining completely unknown, though even that title is probably beyond their reach.

Facebook Changes Again: Everything You Need To Know

I think Facebook began to go downhill when it introduced "apps" - third-party services of dubious usefulness that tended to be fragmented very often duplicated each other. And it looks as though this is going to get worse.


Facebook Changes Again: Everything You Need To Know:

Facebook apps need only ask permission once to share stories on your behalf. Although not as big a deal as the Timeline, this tweak may be one of the more controversial. Previously, apps had to ask every time they shared information about you in your profile. Now, the first time you authorize the app, it will tell you what it’s going to share about you. If you’re cool with that, the app never has to ask you again.

And that is why, if anyone invites me to something on Facebook, and it asks for access to information about my friends, I back out as quickly as possible.

The last one that caught me like that was a thing called "Branch Out", which at first sight looked a bit like Linked-In.

If you joined, it asked which of your friends you would like to work with in various things. I went through it, thinking it might provide some useful, or at least interesting information at the end of this. It didn't.

Instead, it spammed my friends with a thing on their Facebook "wall" saying that I had said something about them in "Branch Out". But if they went to "Branch Out" they would never find out what I was alleged to have said about them -- they would just be asked to answer a similar series of questions, the sole purpose of which was to collect information so that their friends could be spammed in turn.

In other words, the whole "Branch out" thing is a scam to collect information to spam people. And so it is with a lot of Facebook apps.

If you are one of my Facebook friends, you'll probably see something like this:

Steve Hayes is using BranchOut on Facebook | Facebook.
14 minutes ago

Actually I was trying to see if there is any way of opting out or resigning from "Branch out". There doesn't seem to be.

I'm always presented with several "apps" relating to family history and genealogy, which are interests of mine. Two of the most insidious are MyHeritage and Geni.com. I actually encountered both outside of Facebook, but they too are traps for the unwary. You can see my criticisms of MyHeritage here, and Geni.com here.

I like Facebook for keeping in touch with people I know -- friends and family, especially those who are far away or whom I havent seen for a long time. It's useful for making contact with long-lost friends and acquaintances or recently-discovered members of one's extended family. It's good for seeing what people are up to. But that's about it.

Kakangelism on steroids: the Byzantine Catholic Patriarchate

I first heard of the Byzantine Catholic Patriarchate only about half an hour ago, after reading about a fellow blogger, an Anglican priest in England, who had received a denunciatory spam message from them Nouslife: With 'friends' like this, who needs other faiths?.

I'd never heard of it before, so did a Google search for them, and discovered that they were a brand-new denomination or sect (they broke away from the Roman Catholic Church) founded last April, and that their main activity seems to be denouncing everyone they don't like, which seems to be, well, everyone (except themselves, of course).

I came across someone else who had received their spam, who seemed to assume, erroneously, that this particular sect somehow represented Orthodoxy: Not Healing the East-West Schism | Sinaiticus:

Like many pastors and churches in the Presbyterian Church (USA), I recently received (7/15/2011) an e-mail from the Byzantine Catholic Patriarchate, condemning our denomination’s loosening sexual ethics for church leaders. It is apparent that they culled the Internet for e-mail addresses related to Presbyterian congregations and sent out a massive spam.

The author of that blog is concerned about their role in healing the East-West schism. I feel I can safely say that they are as relevant to healing the East-West schism as the Westboro Baptist Church, which they seem to most closely resemble.

I'm not sure what the "Byzantine Catholic Patriarchate" stands for, but it reminds me of the Pogo comics of 50 years ago, when Pogo was accosted by the founders of the newly formed Jack Acid Society, who were going around recruiting members, and also, more important, denouncing enemies.

Pogo asked, "What does the Jack Acid Society stand for?"

"We won't stand for much, believe me."

Telephone tapping and worse

One would think, with all the brouhaha about the closure of News of the World as a result of the telephone tapping scandal, that people might think twice about sending out spam e-mails like this

XCeptor - the ultimate spy software for mobile phones - you can install one REMOTELY to any phone around the world.

Now all you will need to do in order to get total control over a mobile (target) phone of a person of your interest is to send the special MMS to that target phone, which is generated by our unique Xsepter LOADER. This way you can get very valuable and otherwise un-accessible information about a person of your interest very easily.

All you will need to do is to install our unique Xseptic LOADER to your mobile phone and start its execution. You will get the dialog box on the display of your mobile phone and you will be requested to enter a phone number of a target mobile phone of a person of your interest. Afterwords you will choose SEND option in that dialog box. The Xseptoid LOADER will send the special MMS message to the target phone immediately and a person of your interest will have no idea that this special MMS message has been received by his phone. Our Xseptic software will be immediately installed to a target phone and it will be automatically configured for communication with your (source) phone. The special MMS message which has been used as the carrier of our Xsepter software from your (source) phone to a target phone will be automatically deleted then.

The example of use:

You will send the special MMS message containing our unique Xsepter software to a mobile phone of e.g. your girlfriend. In case your girlfriend will be using her (target) mobile phone, you will be provided by following unique functions:

In case your girlfriend will make an outgoing call or in case her (target) phone will receive an incoming call, you will get on your personal standard mobile phone an immediate SMS message about her call. This will give you a chance to listen to such call immediately on your standard mobile phone.

In case your girlfriend will send an outgoing SMS message from her (target) mobile phone or she will receive a SMS message then you will receive a copy of this message on your mobile phone immediately.

This target phone will give you a chance to listen to all sounds in its the surrounding area even in case the phone is switched off. Therefore you can hear very clearly every spoken word around the phone.

You will get a chance to find at any time the precise location of your girlfriend by GPS satellites.

All these functions may be activated / deactivated via simple SMS commands.

... wouldn't one?

The name of the software has been changed to protect the guilty, but no doubt lots of unscrupulous journalists already know and use it.

My very own Internet stalkers?

I seem to have got my very own Internet stalkers, or perhaps I share them with a zillion other people.

I got an e-mail this morning, with the heading:

This is pretty interesting...

and it goes on to say:

Colin Bruce sent you a private message

I keep getting messages from this "Colin Bruce Milne" saying he wants to be my "friend" on this, that or the other social network. He sends me private messages to say that he has private messages for me. But I don't know him, I've never actually talked to him or met him, he's never left a comment on my blogs, which is quite easy to do.

So why does he want to be my friend if he never talks to me, except for sending me private messages to say that he has a "private message" for me?

It's a bit like getting a slip from the post office asking you to call for a registered letter which tells you that you have a registered letter that tells you that you have a registered letter that tells you that you have a registered letter.

Why the infinite regress?

So I now find myself wondering if perhaps this "Colin Bruce Milne" is some kind of new internet species, the "professional friend". Perhaps he's not a real person, perhaps he's a 'bot. But if he is a real person, I now suspect that he gets paid a commission by conning people into joining social networks by inviting them to join the network in order to read a message to tell them that he has left them a message on another social network that they will have to join to read the message that says that he has left them a message on another social network, and if he gets enough people to join enough networks he'll qualify for the grand draw for the grand prize of a weekend in a timeshare resort in Naboomspruit, listening to salesman wittering on boringly about the benefits of timeshare.

So perhaps he's not my very own internet stalker, perhaps he's stalking other people as well, having discovered a new way to propagate spam.

He's not the only one, though.

There's another one, who sends messages saying:

I have a message for you.
E-mail:oxfam_05@yahoo.gr
Regards,
Mr.John Erere

Same technique: send a message saying "I have a message for you". Well, he obviously has my address, so I'm waiting for the message, and sure enough, a couple of days later it arrives:

I have a message for you.
E-mail:oxfam_14@yahoo.gr
Regards,
Mr.John Erere

What I really need is to find a way of introducing Colin Bruce Milne to Mr. John Erere.

I'm sure they'll get on like a house on fire.

I could become a professional Internet friendship broker, introducing professional friends to each other, and possibly to my old friend, Mrs Mariam Abacha, from whom I haven't heard for a long time. Perhaps I should forward the messages from Oxfam5 to Oxfam14 and vice versa, mutatis mutandis.

Letter to an alien spammer

Someone calling themselves oxsumms
of dwpyuwvbdbfq.com/
giving the e-mail address of datakt@glfrag.com

Attempted to post the follow spam comment on my blog this morning.

qzwsPE ntrdcanlqxxc, [url=http://qadfozdfvdvs.com/]qadfozdfvdvs[/url],
[link=http://uuicltrgblpo.com/]uuicltrgblpo[/link],
http://edqnyngtpngu.com/

I usually delete about 4-5 such spam comments each week, identical in form, though using different combinations of nonsense letters and nonsene URLs.

I'm just curious about why these are being posted? What's in it for you? What reward is there for such futile and meaningless activity?

I suppose it is just possible that somewhere in a galaxy far far away there is a language in which "qzwsPE ntrdcanlqxxc" means "Enlarge your nine penises", but what mere earthling could be expected to understand it, much less be tempted by the offer?

So what does motivate people (or extraterrestrial space aliens) to engage in such futile, meaningless and apparently unrewarding behaviour?

Enquiring minds want to know.

Amatomu spammer gets away with the booty

What's hot in the South African blogging Zeitgeist today?

Booty, that's what.

No, it's not about Trevor Manuel's upcoming budget planning to fleece the taxpayers.

It's some foreign spammer trying to make a quick buck: New online casino no deposit codes… New online casino no deposit codes…...

Come on, Amatomu -- don't let them get away with the booty!

Running out of bandwidth

For the last couple of days we have had no internet access, because we have used up our 2 Gig limit.

This means that we cannot use e-mail or any other services for one week out of four, and so if anyone wonders why we haven't responded to e-mails etc, that is why.

There seems to be an idea the "broadband" means unlimited access, and so people scoff at complaints about sending e-mails with HTML codes that take up ten times the space of the message text, and things like that. I've never looked at YouTube videos that people put in ther blogs, or refer to in e-mails, and newsgroup postings, and we still run out of bandwidth.

Of course part of it is spam, but the fact is that bandwidth is not unlimited, even in these days of high-speed connections.