SPAM and Courtesy

[NW Mailing List]

So far, I wouldn't call this a stellar week on what is usually a friendly
and useful list.

A member is trying to tap into the vast knowledge that is collected in this
group, to ID some locations in a video he wants to maintain control of. He
thought sharing it via ubiquitous YouTube would be the best way to reach
members with a common platform. But negotiating the pitfalls of access
control didn't work. Instead of offering suggestions on how to fix the
problem or other sharing sites that might work, he was yelled at multiple
times, "It's private. What a waste of time!" Wonder if he'll try again?

Then we received a message from someone whose account was hacked and used
to send spam far and wide. It is good to question the validity of a
questionable link, but PLEASE don't include the link in the message. All
that does is continue to perpetuate it across the internet, as it is shared
across systems and subscribers and for some, take it out of the context of
the original spam message.

In any case, if you aren't sure about a link, DON'T CLICK IT! If you really
want to confirm if it is legitimate, email the sender directly and ask if
the message is safe and correct. More often that not, when there are
multiple recipients along with this list, someone's account was compromised
and their entire list of contacts was added to the spam message. Probably
the best course is to just move along and let the moderators purge the
message.

Have a great rest of the week.

Bruce in Blacksburg
Virginia Tech Webmaster
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