While I call this article ‘pet site spammers’, I realize this is a curse that seems to have been handed down to anyone who either starts a webpage dedicated to pets, or decides to join a group featuring their favorite pet.
There you are, relaxing the day away reading your favorite blog, or checking out the new photos on your favorite Facebook group, and then you see it -nestled in between the cute animal faces is someone sporting sunglasses, hats or shoes. Or perhaps a get rich scheme link saying you can make $5,000 a day if you’ll only click for more information.
Collage by Elisa
I feel a lot of people feel the same as I do about these spammers. I’d like to give you an example taken from our PoC Facebook group page titled Pictures-of-cats.org. I admit, I feel badly for not approving each person who asks to join as soon as they request being added. Sometimes I feel like I’m hiring a potential new group member for a government contract.
By this I mean I have to check out how many groups that person has joined, how long they’ve been on Facebook, and whether they have any pet photos on the profile page. I also judge them by how many friends they already have in the group. A few nights ago I took a chance and added everyone who asked to join. I posted the following notice as soon as I did it, because I was in a mood.
“I’VE JUST ADDED EVERYONE WANTING TO JOIN — IF I HAVE TO TAKE TIME OUT FROM MY WRITING ABOUT SHELTER PETS TO KICK PEOPLE OUT FOR NON-CAT RELATED MATERIAL, MEANING SPAM, I PROMISE TO MAKE YOUR LIFE A LIVING HELL FOR POSTING IT HERE — ENOUGH SAID?”
Ok, I’ll admit I’m in a mood. I’ve been super busy, and don’t have time to referee a bunch of potential spammers. And you’d better believe I hear about it anytime a spam ad shows up on the site.
It didn’t take long for Helen Preas to barge onto our site and post the add you see in the collage. This really bothers me for several reasons. First of all, before I banned her permanently, I couldn’t find her name on our group list for members. So how did she post the spam in the first place? Then I got a bit madder, and posted her spam on my Facebook wall warning she’s a potential spammer. Several of my friends shared that post.
I’d like to know how all of you feel about Facebook spammers, or spammers in general. Am I getting worked up over nothing and just getting to the age I expect a little respect to the pet site community? I realize bloggers with websites (like PoC) have to weed out comments, but there are also programs or widgets or something to help with the process.
On Facebook, we’re thrown to the inconsiderate skanks who disrespect our love for animals by peddling their foreign import trash. So not only are they taking away from the overall image of a group, they’re also costing Americans jobs because most of this merchandise is made overseas. Even though most groups post spammers will be removed and banned, these ingrates post their trashy spam, regardless of a warning.
Any tips on how to screen applicants for groups to avoid this? I’ve been told even if a person doesn’t have an animal on their Facebook page to show everyone they’re for animal rights, they may legitimately want to join a cat or dog group. Your comments are welcome.
Thankfully, I don’t have a website and never will.
The spam that I get is unbelievable.
I’ve had everything from how to breastfeed (I’m over 60) to what I can do with a body part that doesn’t “snap” anymore.
Most are just sick.
“Big Brother” needs to get a grip and get out of my life.
Exactly Dee. Just makes me sick esp with ones that say go check my Profile so many times. Don’t people get it when your not replying that your not interested. I only have a blog which I’ve set up for my Cats Life and My Scrapbooking Layouts which im slowly getting done.
I hate these spam thing too, I get way too many. Especially the ones that i get that say hi handsome man….. ,when im not even a man well unless I changed over-nite, which i doubt it lol. I often wander if half of the viewers on Jasmines Cat Page, is actually Spam. It was abit weird when i saw my photo of jasmine was shared to photos of gay guys. I found this out as something seemed odd. So im going to have to change some things i think, just makes me feel sick 🙁 I’m actually finding Facebook abit boring. Since I created my blog with WordPress, I think I’ll dedicate more time there and on Google. It just be great to know how to block these people out, I think also I get way more spam on my main Account than i do on Gmail which is totally amazing.
Do you know whether Facebook themselves are involved in this? Are these adverts sometimes or are these as you say individuals spamming, meaning promoting their own websites or their products? Would you know if this is in breach of Facebook’s terms and conditions?
Sorry for the questions but I don’t really like Facebook that much and don’t go on it that much except to promote this website but I do that properly and not through spamming.
As for this website there is a massive amount of spamming going on behind the scenes which is picked up by software. The site gets about 1000 spam comments every 2 days of which 99.8% are picked up by the software and the remainder I delete myself.
Spamming on the Internet is endemic. It is catastrophic and it’s everywhere. It’s a massive problem and the biggest problem of all is that there is nothing and nobody regulating the Internet except big businesses which run their own websites.
There is a need for some sort of regulatory body to oversee the Internet. At the moment Google is the nearest thing to that that we have and they are big business so all their decisions on made upon how much money they can make.
Everything to do with the Internet is about how to make money, and more of it pretty well, and that leads to a certain amount of organised anarchy.
I know the type of Facebook ads you’re talking about. This Helen person is a normal spammer. You can report spam but there’s so much it doesn’t seem to do much good. I didn’t mind using her image because like you said, any publicity is good publicity.
Don’t worry about not going on Facebook much. I live there enough for both of us 🙂
I really hate it too Elisa. So pissy and irritating. I sometimes reply with a monolog about how it must suck to wake up every morning knowing they are literally the flies on the shit which makes the internet just another skanky trash hole because of the narcississm of capitalistic, corporatism and weirdos with no shame – all under the umbrella of advertizing for the most part. I tell them to go back to bed instead of taking little dumps on other peoples stuff.
So you can see I’ve reached your level of frustration and some. Another thing I did which is questionable in the eyes of the law is Igot pissed at somebody who hacked my aunts email and used it to advertise, sending us emails at work every day literally a few times a day. It got me so angry I wrote a script in my email program that was on a loop to autoreply to his emails – it would literally send him I think about 50 or 60 emails in one minute, so every second, and then after a day I got a call from my service provider and my computer crashed but he never came back after that 🙂
He always sent links to ads for medicine ‘canadian pharmacy’ make your wang 50 times bigger for 50 times longer – then ones about the magic cream that has doctors running around naked in disbelief and protest because some 110 year old granny now looks a month or two short of 18 and they have lost their jobs.
Shameless disgusting horrible bastards make the internet world and most likely the real world an ugly place. This is the narcissism of capitalism.
I ordered my Elavil from one of those companies once and they got the order to me super fast. Then the reorder they took about a month, all the while saying it was on back order. I almost died. But because I placed that first order back in 2009 I now get about 20 emails a day wanting to refill those pills for me. I finally just found a doctor an get them for $4 a month. Wasn’t worth the trouble.
Hey there marc, that was very clever what you did 🙂 Makes me sick the amount of spam get into my email account. Hope your well 🙂
I don’t think FB worries too much about spam. It just means more people are using the site. What do they care? Of course they should be concerned about user experience but their no.1 motivation is making money.
You could argue that FB uses or exploits people.
When I dictate comments using Dragon Dictate software it produces some weird typos which I don’t spot sometimes 😉
‘Spanning’ for ‘spamming’