You can't go online and not meet spam links on social networking sites, mails, and advertisements. If you haven't, believe me, you will be coming across one or two anytime soon.
Wikipedia defines spams as 'the use of electronic messaging systems (including most broadcast media, digital delivery systems) to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately.'
Just now, three friends sent me private messages on Facebook bearing the same spam message: LOL, check this out http://on.fb.m*/gDIhS*. It annoyed me. Three people fell for the obvious spam. Who knows how many all in all were they in the whole Facebook universe tonight and the nights before this?
I didn't wanna click the link. It was the worst spam to ever hit private messaging. I can say that because I have met more hundreds of spam messages and I know how they work. They make you think you wanna click their links, and they use shortened URLs. This one is old fashioned. No internet-smart person will ever fall for that. Clap you hands if you raised an eyebrow upon receiving the same message.
I asked one of my friends who sent me one spam message about it, and he said that the link sent him to a Facebook fanpage where, when you click Like, the spam who sent the message to all of your online friends. So if ever you come across with a page with "Photographer Committed Suicide 3 Days After Taking This Photo" on it, you know where to not point your mouse pointer, unless you wanna get spammed.
And, right now, my Yahoo!Mail account has a staggering number of spams. You don't wanna know how many. You're gonna bleed your nose until you drain out of that red liquid. Luckily, Gmail receives only few spam mails so I don't have to worry myself about receiving unneeded mails and deleting them every time I open my email.
Spams like that also exist in the microblogging site twitter. Last year, users reported a link that extracts their passwords, thus, hacking their accounts. Goodbye tweets. Goodbye mentiones. Goodbye everything. Enter mourning. Enter swearing. Enter risks.
What risks am I talking about here? One, it lets the spammers invade your account and trick your followers. And two, the 'tricking' is not just simple tricking, it involves money. You get the picture I guess. You're so gonna hate spammers after that.
The shortened Uniform Resource Locators are the main problems. Everyone's using it on Twitter because of the limited text space. Microblogging site have limited characters for each post. One of the only few ways of adding more characters than allowed is by using Twitlonger.
Guess what, there are ways to avoid getting spammed. And they are basics.
1. Change passwords regularly. If you don't have the memorizing abilities, ask your friends what are notes for. There are many ways of being reminded.
2. Familiarize the SNS and the sites you're entering. This enables you to judge the links cautiously. Just like in the real world, the wisest will always have an edge over the unwitting.
3. Always doubt shortened URLs. The most used may be the bit.ly, now, please, ask guidance from above before click. And, please, don't take what I said literally. I mean double check first.
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