Entry 20: "A Not-So-Limited Time Offer!"

Yo!

Spam. Not just a spreadable meat substitute. It's also the most hated addition to your daily incoming email list. Most email services offer an automatic filtering system to avoid having all those ad-heavy emails clutter up your inbox. Unfortunately, that's just not enough. Thanks to a couple strategically placed spelling errors in the return email address and/or subject line, millions upon millions of unwanted spam emails seep into your inboxes each and every day. Why you can never actually unsubscribe from them all and stop having to use spam filters period definitely ranks among my personal top 5 most likely to never be answered questions of all time. Well, aside from "Why do the orange and pink Fla-Vor-Ice Popsicles you get at Rite-Aid for $1.59/box always freeze first, before the other colors?", "Why are we STILL fighting in Iraq?", "Is Tupac Shakur really dead?" and the timeless "How many licks to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop?", of course.

According to Wikipedia.com, approximately 55 BILLION "spam" emails were sent out last month alone and dumped into your spam folder (give or take the entire population of Spain), with, I'll bet, exactly 83,512 actually worth opening (not counting the automatic resending of the same email to multiple addresses, obviously. Just the one send each.) because, and ONLY because, the spam filters graciously donated to us by our email provider accidentally filtered an important email to that folder because it thought there happened to be one too many numbers in the return email address, or there was a slight spelling error on the subject line. Readers, in the end, all that's happening here is a 21st century fighting-fire-with-fire scenario, what with trying to thwart a spam email "bot" program with a mail server-implemented spam filtering counter-bot program and all, but when all is said and done, and you get so fed up with the horde of spam thrown your way every day that you're just about ready to stop using email altogether, we must understand the plain and simple fact that...

COMPUTERS ARE RETARDS.

You see, when I used to do website design all the time, I was constantly faced with a never ending situation of debugging my own work, making sure the web content program language worked perfectly. Not a tagline out of place, not an embedded picture name misspelled. It's all part of the job. It's all part of the raw precision that makes not just the internet, but computers in general, tick. Everybody knows the computer is the single most logically precise "mind" (read: "system") in the world. It's also the single dumbest pile of silicon, plastic and metal you'll ever encounter in your life. Obviously, if you don't know how to configure everything just right and make it all work, since the computer can't check itself for you, your several hundred to a few thousand dollar investment isn't worth more than the paper you used to write the check to buy it. Period.

Firewalls, Anti-Virus, Anti-Spyware. We've all heard of them. We all use them (at the very least, Anti-Virus. Almost all email services carry embedded virus protection that's used at the very least when you download attachments. Yahoo, for example, uses Norton AntiVirus for protection). But sometimes, unless it's set up properly, your whole security system can, and will be used to your own detriment. BOTTOM LINE is, we all need to exercise more care when we take the risk of not just opening a spam message, but even opening our spam folder. My advice is, when someone gives you their email address for the first time, add it to your address book IMMEDIATELY so the system will recognize the person and pass the message through to your inbox intact. Don't wait until you receive an email and then hit the button to add them. Like I said, the reason for spam-dumping can potentially be as simple as a misspelled name. Obviously, if you're not worried the person you added to your address book will get lost in spam, or you know for a fact that the system won't get confused when you receive something from the person, you can always take 'em out of the list later. Now that that PSA is out of the way, I've got some Anti-Spyware upgrades to download. ...But that's just me.

-D.

P.S. I hope you'll excuse the blatant self-promotion here; you know I wouldn't do this ordinarily, but I'm in extenuating circumstances here. While I'm on the subject of spam this week, I'd like to transition into mentioning something a friend of mine passed on to me personally, not a spyware-carrying spam message. I'm working on one of those referral sites where if I can get some of you readers to do one of their listed offers (don't worry, they have some free or super-cheap $1-$6 offers too), I'll score an in-demand piece of current cutting-edge technology. Specifically, an Xbox 360. I also want to casually remind you all of the past twenty weeks of interesting blog content I've been delivering to you. Not that I'm expecting this to actually work out as if I'm expecting you all to get involved in this, but it'd really, really be appreciated if I could get some assistance with this. Also, if you wouldn't mind helping with this, one: THANKS BILLIONS and two, make sure to uncheck the "I want to receive promotional emails..." box on the signup page I'm about to provide a link to. I really wouldn't want any of you fine readers to start getting MORE spam on account of me, especially after this week's blog post.

http://xbox360s.freepay.com/?r=31545003

Also, if you get some more people to complete some of those offers when they're linked to the page you'll be sending them with your referral number in the address (obviously, 31545003 is the number for me), you'll get a 360 too! I just wanted to pass this on. Again, everyone, thanks for any help you can give with this. I hope to see you here next Monday, same time and place.