So. As the owner of a few Yahoo groups, including one rather large Freecycle list, I’ve been getting Grouply spam for, um, quite some time now. (And yeah, I know Grouply is technically sending it on behalf of one or more of their users who “know” me, so it’s not “really” spam - but given that I “know” over 12,000 people inasmuch as they are all subscribed to groups I own and/or moderate, *cough* SPAM.) Tonight, after receiving my eight gagillionth Grouply invite, I decided to hop on over to their site and see if I can figure out how to make the emails stop.

Thankfully, I quickly discovered that I can opt my Yahoo groups out of the service altogether. Done and done - and owing in no small part to their obnoxious FAQ section.

To wit: Someone is spreading false anti-Grouply rumors in one of my groups. What should I do?

Yes, because legions of suicidal fanboys are in tears over the thought that someone, somewhere, might be talking smack about Grouply. The horra!

Grouply’s response is…well, it ought to earn them Stephen’s Alpha Dog of the Week award, I tell you wut.

Certainly everyone is entitled to their opinion about what constitutes a useful internet service. Unfortunately, sometimes the line is crossed, and several Grouply users have reported encountering anti-Grouply postings in their groups with false statements being presented as facts, not opinions. Examples include:

* “Grouply automatically spams everyone in the group…”
* “Grouply is a phisher and an identity thief…”
* “Grouply makes private group information public…”
* “Grouply is a scam…”

Spreading false rumors (see I heard that Grouply is a spammer… for more examples) puts the author and the entire group at risk. Yahoo’s Terms of Service (TOS) prohibits “mak[ing] available any Content that is … defamatory … [or] libelous…”. Yahoo has shut down user accounts or entire groups when the TOS is violated.

If you encounter any defamatory statements about Grouply, you might want to remind the group owner about Yahoo’s TOS and point them to blog.grouply.com/protect/ for “the facts” about Grouply.

In other words, Grouply encourages you to dispel negative myths about the service by….wait for it…issuing thinly veiled threats to your fellow list members - and even the group’s owners!

Because nothing says “credible” and “trustworthy” and “zomg, we’re not a scam, we swear!” like threatening to have Yahoo terminate well-meaning-but-confused-and-concerned web users’ accounts.

Well played, guys, well played.

(For a rundown on the pros and cons of Grouply, this post is quite informative. Again, coming from a business that encourages users to threaten others into compliance a la Scientology, “We’ll protect your Yahoo user name and password and all associated sensitive information, just trust us, we swear” isn’t all that reassuring.)

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Tagged: grouply yahoo the internets alpha dog of the week ballsy

Spam promising faster, stronger orgasms - directly above an email reminder for your grandmother’s 92nd birthday.

Excuse me while I go bleach my eyes.

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Tagged: email spam the internets

As part of their Earth Day Lite ™ coverage, CNN solicited suggestions on saving money in this tough shitty economy. What this has to do with Earth Day, I know not, other than that saving money and “being green” sometimes intersect. They could have elaborated, really.

Anyway, Cheryl from New Mexico kind of irritated me:

DON LEMON: Here’s what Cheryl from New Mexico writes: “I no longer shop online, and I don’t use credit cards except in an extreme emergency. And that is almost never.”

Zum, what’s with all the hating on the credit cards and the internets? As long as both are used responsibly, they can help you save money.

Let’s start with the credit cards, since they’re a wee bit more difficult to defend than the internet. As long as you know how to play the system, credit cards can be pretty durn useful. For starters, don’t charge more on a card than you can easily pay off - in full - the next month. Inexplicably, banks are exempt from usury laws, such that 36% interest rates are the norm. So I’m definitely not saying that you should run out and charge expensive items that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford. Overspending, bad. Interest charges, bad. Greedy banks, bad. No argument there.

But as long as you stay within your budget, charging everyday items is a good thing. You can increase your credit score and earn rewards from your credit card company. (I earn $25 Amazon gift certificates, usually to the rate of 1-2 a month. How do you think I fund all those book piles?) And I’ll only pay with credit when shopping on eBay - if the seller ends up being a fraud, I can contest the charges. Not so much if I pay via a cash transfer from my bank, something that Paypal always seems to be pushing, the the point of harassment.

The “Credit cards, evil!!!1!!” meme is especially annoying, perhaps because this is something I’ve been hearing lectures about since I got my own card. Back when I first moved in with Shane, when I was still in college, I worked at a local grocery store part-time. Since I was already there, and I hated wasting time with the unpaid, forced half hour lunches I had to take during every shift six hours or longer, I did all the grocery shopping for us, usually during my lunch break. I could not believe the admonitions some of the guys (they were always guys) in the grocery department would give me about paying for groceries on my credit card! As though I was going to blow my paycheck on shiny glass jars of peaches or something. We wimmins, just can’t be trusted with plastic. We have an extra special femaley spending gland, located somewheres down near the ovaries, donthchaknow?

In retrospect, my store was filled with Nice Guys ™, probably of the concern troll variety. I just didn’t have the blaming skillz to call ‘em out harshly as I should have. Patriarchy-blaming is yet another gift the internets has bestowed upon this featherhead.

(More below the fold…)

Happy Monday.

(Maximize your browser for the ultimate awwwww factor.)

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Tagged: the internets dog canine pug

KellyGarbato.com in May 2006:

Smite Me! as of this morning:

Now, the growth chart on easyVegan.info made sense, since the posts/pages went from a few dozen in June of ‘06 to more than 2000 today, but I’m puzzled as to why Smite Me! looks so much more complicated than KellyGarbato.com (the ridiculously bloated predecessor to this blog).

*shrug*

I guess the highways on the Internet will not, in point of fact, become more few.

(You can get your own geeky goodness here.)

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Tagged: smiteme the internets website map website map geeky frivolties blog blogging

I logged onto Amazon this morning to check the status of my Jolly Roger flag order, and this is the Recommendations list that greeted me:

I seriously do not appreciate the implications of Recommendation #6.

So not cool, guys.

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Tagged: amazon amazon.com confederate flag my recommendations race racism racist flags

Can it be? Does Dennis Kucinich seriously have a Flickr account? No frikkin’ way!

On the other hand, what crazy stalker person would have so many pics of the man, such as the one above, where our good Congressman is seen…getting a parking ticket?

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Tagged: dennis kucinich 2008 elections flickr

How’s this for effective activism?

Let’s say you visit your local library and check out Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique and The Kinsey Report, both of which are included in a conservative hit list of the “Ten Most Harmful Books of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.” Or maybe Heather Has Two Mommies, or a few books about guns and hunting.

As you leave the library, a police officer stops you and says that you cannot drive home with those “controversial” books in your car — not on the main road anyway. You’d wonder what they were smoking down at the precinct, right?

Well, in essence, that’s what Verizon Wireless did to the reproductive rights advocacy group NARAL Pro-Choice America in September. When the organization asked Verizon for a “short code” in order to send text messages to the cell phones of people who had requested information, Verizon said no. Other mobile networks had given NARAL the go-ahead, but Verizon contended it had the right to block messages it deemed “controversial” or “unsavory.”

The news of Verizon’s denial of service went public with a Sept. 27 New York Times article that positioned the dispute as a “skirmish in the larger battle over the question of ‘net neutrality’ — whether carriers or Internet service providers should have a voice in the content they provide to customers.” Thousands of angry customers, myself included, immediately called and wrote to Verizon. With egg on its face, the company reversed itself the same day.

I remember opening NARAL’s action alert the day after it was sent. As a recently former Verizon customer (I was able to squirm out of my contract when I moved, since my new place doesn’t get decent coverage), I was eager to rip ‘em a new one, but I was surprised - nay, shocked - to find that the action alert had already expired.

It doesn’t happen often, but it’s an awesome feeling when your ideological opponents buckle so quickly under the pressure. Too cool.

Remember this one the next time I pass along an action alert…

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Tagged: naral now national organization of women below the belt Kim Gandy verizon net neutrality feminism abortion activism reproductive rights

Hey, the troll baiting seems to have driven up traffic to my significant other’s blog. Just thought I’d get in on the fun, too.

RON PAUL IS A BIBLE-BEATING, SPERM WORSHIPING, HOMOBIGOTED MISOGYNIST DOUCHEBAG.

That is all.

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Tagged: ron paul troll baiting douchebag

Originally posted @ www.kellygarbato.com/blog/2007-06-12/
Filed under: Politics — Kelly @ June 12, 2007 12:07 pm