Spam usually sucks. It’s everywhere, it’s constant and it’s generally annoying too. But in one case, it is hilarious. Meet @Horse_ebooks, a pathetically hilarious spambot on Twitter that, unlike other Twitter spambots, doesn’t bother anyone. Unless you decide to follow it.
Okay, we get it. We fail at comedy. Don’t get your knickers in a twist. We discuss the Wikileaks saga, the fact that Porn aims to be the next Google in stealing your private data and that Apple tries to push a dead social network with a dead celebrity.
Remember Tagged? That social network that told you that your friends were on the site and sent you a message, but usually found out they weren’t? Well, guess what – that’s going to stop as they have settled with the San Francisco District Attorney’s office after abusing the email contacts of users.
The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), the media and telecommunications regulator in Australia, has given Optus a $110,000 fine for two alleged infringements of the Spam Act 2003, for sending SMS messages without an “accurate sender identification”.
While we were gone, we started seeing these comments (like the one’s above), and we thought it was strange, but not suspicious – but when I keep getting notifications on G-Mail and Outlook about these comments, I decided something was wrong, and there is … it is a new type of the blogger’s worst enemy – comment spam.
The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has fined DC Marketing Europe for “serious breaches” in the 2003 Spam Act – where the maximum penalty is $149,600.
ACMA has said that DC Marketing Europe had breached the act 102 times, all in July & August last year. DC Marketing Europe had place short, small calls on mobile phone users, placing a missed call message. When users called up the number, they were given marketing messages from the company.