I haven't had much use for the time-wasters my online friends toss my way. You know what I'm talking about - "Four of your friends thinks you're an idiot, find out who" or "Someone has a crush on you" are a couple I see a lot. You answer a few questions, but to see the results of your IQ test or find out who your secret admirer is, you need to enter your cell phone number. Oh yeah, and forward this message to all your friends. That always seemed a bit fishy to me, but I didn't give it a lot of thought.
Last night I caught a story on KOMO 4 TV that confirmed my suspicions. Seems that if you enter your cell phone number you'll find yourself receiving text messages with your horoscope or other information and you'll have a hard stopping it. Even worse you may find some new charges on your phone bill for the subscription to this service.
A quick Google search for "someone has a crush" yielded acouple of entries referring to these annoying emails. It seems another variation of this bothersome also harvests emails of you friends by asking you to enter the email addresses of the friend(s) that think you're and idiot or may have a crush on you.
Come on folks, aren't there enough ways to waste your time on the Internet? OK, I admit to forwarding "(Lil) Green Patches" and tossed a water balloon or two, but I'm amazed at the number of these things I get from my online friends. If you've got the time to spend writing 25 random things about yourself more power to you. But please don't send those to me. I haven't got the time. And do me and your true friends a favor: when someone or something online asks for our screen names, email addresses or anything else, please don't give it out.
Now, please pass this along to everyone in your address book.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
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