How many online versions of you are there out there? While it might be relatively easy to crack down on a spammer trying to use your email address or hack into your social media accounts, there could be multiple versions of you on Instagram without any hint that they exist — until they start tagging your friends. [More]
spam
FTC: Spammers Responsible For Millions Of ‘Free Gift Card’ Text Messages To Pay $2.5M
By 2.18.14
You did not win a free $1,000 gift card like that text message tells you. It’s a scam, and the companies behind it are now paying million of dollars in settlements. [More]
Superfresh Sends Unsolicited E-Mail To Let Me Know It’s Taking A Break From Sending Unsolicited E-Mail
By 2.17.14
Did you ever break up with someone who, after the breakup, couldn’t stop proactively calling/texting/e-mailing you to let you know they were over you and this would be the last time you hear from them… until the next time? That’s sort of how this e-mail from supermarket chain SuperFresh comes across to us. [More]
Snapchat Hack Attack Hitting Users With Spam Photos Of Delicious, Frothy Smoothies
By 2.12.14
While there’s no ideal way to get spammed, and being hacked is an unpleasant experience overall, the latest attack on Snapchat looks kind of delicious. Users are reporting receiving photos of tasty smoothies with a spammy link from their friends, who are definitely not sending said drinkalicious photos. [More]
FTC Settles With Spammer Who Sent Millions Of Deceptive Texts
By 2.5.14
Junk mail and e-mail spam are annoying enough, but text message spam can be truly aggravating. Not only is it pointless, but also, depending on your phone plan, you may get charged for the privilege of having to delete scummy, scammy links. [More]
Snapchat Figures It’s Best To Prove Users Are Actually Human With New Security Update
By 1.22.14
Now that Snapchat has had its toes firmly dipped in the pool of potential security threats, it seems the company has realized it might be best to stem the tide of spambots posing as real users on the photo-sharing service. [More]
Why It May Not Be A Bad Thing That Gmail Will Automatically Display Images In Messages
By 12.12.13
If you have a Gmail account, you’re more than familiar with opening a commercial e-mail that looks like a strange wireframe with no images. Then you click “Display images below” and the blanks get filled in and (hopefully) it all makes much more sense. Google announced today that it will now automatically load these images, which is a move that has its pros and cons. [More]
We Live In A World Where Spam-Flavored Macadamia Nuts Exist
By 10.10.13
Sometimes it feels like there’s nothing left to look forward to in a food landscape busy spawning franken-pastry hybrids left and right and “reinvented” pizza. But then along comes a product pairing nuts and canned meat and faith in the culinary innovation of the world is restored. [More]
Social Media Spam Is Up 355% So Far This Year
By 10.1.13
Times used to be, you could laugh at all the ineffectual spam offers piled up behind your email’s filter — “Take that, fake Rolex dealers!” But it’s a whole new beast now that social media is running our electronic lives: A new study says spam on sites like Twitter and Facebook is up 355% in the first half of 2013 alone. We can run, but apparently we just can’t hide. [via Mashable] [More]
Path Texts And Calls Everyone In User’s Address Book About Nonexistent Photos At 6 A.M.
By 4.30.13 — Updated: 5.1.13
UPDATE: After seeing this story on Consumerist, a rep for Path wrote me — on my personal e-mail address suggesting I check out Stephen’s updated post and give Path a try for myself… In spite of the fact that Stephen still maintains that he never opted into sharing his address book nor did he have any pictures to share. Thanks, but I’d rather not bother my friends and family with texts at all hours of the morning. [More]
FTC Goes After Spammers Responsible For 180 Million “Free Gift Card” Text Messages
By 3.7.13
Through eight lawsuits filed in four different U.S. District Courts, the Federal Trade Commission has put the regulatory smackdown on 29 alleged text spammers believed to have blasted out more than 180 million unwanted text messages to consumers. [More]
Gmail Decides That Gmail Messages Are Spam
By 1.15.13
Checking his spam folder, Richard was a little surprised at the reason that this mail service, Gmail, gave for tossing one message into the junk pile. How did they determine that he probably didn’t want this message? Well, because the return address was Gmail.com, and “[they’ve] found that lots of messages from gmail.com are spam.” [More]
Spam’s Maker Buys Skippy, We Hope They Don’t Come Up With Any Wacky Combos
By 1.3.13
Maybe it’s just the refreshing feeling of a brand new year, but this week has already seen a lot of action when it comes to companies buying other companies/brands. Yesterday Avis announced it was buying Zipcar, and today Hormel says it’s handing over $700 million to buy Skippy peanut butter from Unilever. [More]
The Google Algorithm Has Become Self-Aware and Self-Hating
By 10.5.12
Reader golddog has been noticing some unflagged messages/false positives coming from Gmail’s spam filter, but noticed something in his spam box that really, really shouldn’t have been there. It was a message from Google itself, promoting a Google product for sale. The Gmail account that golddog uses on his Android devices flagged this message, naturally, as spam. [More]
Fifth Third Bank E-Mails Me Every Day. I'm Not A Customer
By 9.5.12
Ed gets a daily account alert e-mail from Fifth Third Bank. Keeping up-to-date on your accounts is important, but that seems a little excessive. …Oh. What’s that you say, Ed? You don’t even have an account with Fifth Third Bank? Your e-mail address is associated with someone else’s account and you don’t know how to fix it? [More]
Virgin Mobile Needs Non-Customer’s Personal Information To Stop Spamming her
By 6.19.12
Someone signed up for Virgin Mobile, and used Shadee’s e-mail address by accident. She doesn’t particularly want someone else’s phone bills, so she contacted Virgin Mobile asking to have the problem resolved. They answered with a demand for her personal information: name, mailing address, and her phone number. Why do they need all of this information when she wants to get off their mailing list, not on it? So she reached out and posted on Virgin Mobile’s Facebook wall. The interactions that followed prove that while companies can assign staff to social media, it can’t make them actually listen to consumers. [More]
Spammers Using Pinterest Pics To Hide Scammy Links
By 5.17.12
Through the evolution of e-mail, the Internet and social media, most of the rules for identifying spam remained the same. The text of a scam e-mail sent on old school AOL isn’t that different from the spam links posted today on Twitter or Facebook. But photo-based social sites like Pinterest are giving nogoodniks a less-familiar way to trick people into clicking. [More]
4.5 Billion Spam Texts Sent To U.S. Cellphones Last Year
By 4.30.12
If you think you’ve seen an uptick in the number of spam texts showing up on your wireless phone in recent months, you’re not crazy. A new report claims that the number of those unwanted messages jumped 45% last year, totaling 4.5 billion texts in the U.S. alone. [More]
