Salam, Bloggers! The Arabian Nights Village in Abu Dhabi wants you!

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It's one of the most witless emails I've received in a long time, from a company calling itself 'Smart Comms' and a bloke who's given himself the job title 'Digital Scientist'. You can tell we're in trouble already, can't you?

David, the digital scientist, wants to offer all UAE bloggers the chance to qualify for a free-of-charge stay at the 'Arabian Nights Village', apparently a one of a kind cultural experience in Abu Dhabi. That's it, that's all the detail in the email. All bloggers have to do to 'qualify' is send David a list of their social media followers, specifically:

1) Unique Monthly Visitors to your Blog:
2) Twitter followers:
3) Instagram followers:
4) Facebook fans:
5) Other Social media footprint?

Based on these numbers, presumably - rather than any qualitative or content based analysis, David will work his 'digital science' and select bloggers to join in the 'exciting activities' at Arabian Nights Village.

Presumably David will find this post one day as he trawls the UAE's blogs to find new victims for his 'digital science'. So here's a message for him that is infinitely more satisfying than replying to his email.

Look, David. I don't want to go to 'Arabian Nights Village'. I don't know what it is, what it does, what it's like or even who's behind it. I'm not particularly interested, but you've hardly piqued any shred of residual interest I might have had. I certainly don't want to "take a first-class Desert Safari and stay in houses inspired by Emirati lifestyles from throughout the ages" - not that I'm uninterested in Emirati culture, far from it. But from the tone of your mail, I have the nasty feeling that whatever 'experience' you're offering consists of being hauled around with a ring through my nose and being forced to endure a number of humiliating encounters with something lacklustre before being beasted into posting about it in awed and gushing prose that you would, ideally, dictate. I could be wrong, but that's a chance I'm taking.

I have very little interest indeed in responding to your invitation to validate myself to you by proving I have sufficient followers, friends or other online contacts to jump over your arbitrary bar. Why on earth you thought spamming every blogger/social contact you could scrape from the web with a mail like this would get you any result other than opprobrium, I don't know. I mean, you didn't even take the trouble to address me by name or contact me in any way prior to this. What on earth did you think you were doing? What in the name of all that's chocolate flavoured did you think the 'social' is there in 'social media' for?

Maybe you'll get lucky - maybe there's some rube out there who'll trade his/her twenty followers for a night out with you and your village. But, for the record, David, it's a 'no thanks' from me. Best of luck with other 'bloggers'...

Exeter Medical Center And Comment Spam

40+60 Feet, Euw. (Photo credit: bark)

Channelling Victor Meldrew, I don’t believe it.

I’ve been comment spammed! By the Exeter Medical Center, which is apparently a medical institution in Abu Dhabi. For some reason, a random drooling clot within that organisation thought it would be a great idea to leave this comment on my post way back about the UAE health check. The comment is about feet rather than heads, which is odd because I could have sworn only someone resident within a gated medical institution specialising in the psychologically challenged would have thought comment spamming blogs was appropriate behaviour.

Directors’ Welcome
Friends and Colleagues,
Exeter Medical Center is a specialized Orthopaedic Center based in Abu Dhabi, the fast growing capital of United Arab of Emirates. Aligning with the UAE vision to continually improve healthcare services, EMC has been developed to provide world-class care in Orthopaedics.
In our dedication to provide Orthopaedic Healthcare Professionals with the latest advances in knowledge and training, Exeter Medical Center in association with the Edinburgh Foot & Ankle Unit, would like to invite you to join global leaders and colleagues from around the world in the fascinating city of Abu Dhabi for the Abu Dhabi International Foot & Ankle Symposium in Sheraton Hotel Abu Dhabi – UAE on February 23rd and 24th, 2012.
http://footanklesymposium.blogspot.com

The Abu Dhabi International Foot and Ankle Symposium? Are you fatheaded spam-dumping gargoyles for real? Why would you think it appropriate to paste a notice about it as comment spam on my blog? Whatever next? Are you going to start wallpapering people’s cars with this breathless announcement? Perhaps tattooing people’s children with it, maybe on the forehead? Maybe you can make the above announcement into a t-shirt and have poor people wander the streets wearing it? You could staple it to people’s dogs. Or just kettle shoppers in supermarket aisles and shout foot messages at them?

How would you like it if I turned up in the middle of your stupid foot-fest and started handing out leaflets saying ‘Read Fake Plastic Souks, it’s good for your feet’? Or took over the microphone on your stage, grabbing it from some random toe-tickler to announce a special foot-lovers day on my blog? Maybe if I turned up at the inevitable (and under-attended) press conference you’re going to hold to talk toes and ‘this little piggy goes to market’ and told the media that Fake Plastic Souks was an official media partner of your festival of ponderous pediatric posturing?

You wouldn’t think that was so clever, would you?

So why did you think it was clever to dump comment spam on a blog, you parboiled cretins?

Spamless!

Image via Wikipedia
Anyone with a blog will tell you that the most annoying thing (apart from snarky anonymice) about the whole thing is comment spam. There's a special place in hell for comment spammers that involves extra unpleasantness and daily algebra lessons. They leave inane generic little comments, "I really enjoyed your post, keep up the good work, this is a very good blog I think" and links to their websites.

In one wonderful instance, a comment spammer was actually daft enough to leave his contact details on his WHOIS entry, with the consequences I delightedly reported in this here post. Revenge is indeed sweet.

I've been comment spammed a lot today by an Indian UPVC pipe making company. Grinding my teeth, I arrived at the blog with some scrubbies and a bottle of spam cleaner when I noticed that although I'd been getting the emails (I get a mail every time one of you peeps slips in a sneaky comment), I didn't actually have the spam in the comments. This was wonderful stuff - Google has actually implemented a spam filter and it has snapped up all that spam in a jiffy. It also sucked down Rootless' response to me on the high fructose corn syrup post, which I have now put back in its proper place.

Thank you Google. Now could you please work on finding a way to stop me getting everything (blogs, Google Maps etc) in Arabic by default? Although I respect Arabic, I don't read it - and assuming I do is just a bit dumb for a company as seriously clever as you are.

Touched and Humbled

Image via Wikipedia

I’m touched and humbled by the number of people around the world that care about me and have me in mind. There are literally thousands of them, and many get in touch every day.

There are the people that want to help me improve my love life and also the many people who want to make me thicker (although I am already quite stupid); the people who want to give me money in any number of ways – I am always particularly touched by the Nigerian ladies repatriating money who want to share it with me, but also the former members of US forces in Iraq – war heroes who still have time to spare me a thought in their plans to exfiltrate gold. Then there are the people who want to help me to get cheap meds, I never seem to find the time to thank them but point out that I’m not actually ill right now – it’s nice of them to think of me though.

A lot of people want to make me harder, but I’m too old to start kickboxing lessons. As for those that want to make me stronger and longer, I feel like thanking them but pointing out that I’m quite pleased with my current shape, although I could do with losing a few pounds if I’m totally honest. Sadly, I don’t want a Rolex, although lots of people seem to think it would set me off really nicely. As for the many offers I get that will help me make women moan, I find that forgetting to call my mum works fine, as does keeping a paper tissue in my trousers when I pop them into the wash.

I actually feel a little guilty that so many people care and get in touch to share their thoughts, but I am really bad at getting back to them and saying thanks. Outlook puts many of them in a special folder so I can reply to them all, but I keep deleting it by mistake.

The people I really, really appreciate getting in touch, however, are those lovely chaps and chapesses at Telco Extraordinaire Etisalat. I love when they think of me and offer me things over my telephone. Especially when I get up and cross the room to see who has sent me an urgent message and am delighted, instead, to get a picture message telling me to get an iPhone or call Lanzarote between 4 and 6am for half price every Monday for the next cycle of the moon.

So many people to thank. I only wish I could do it in person...

Spam

no spam! (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Fat Expat got hit by a content spammer today. Content spam is a constant annoyance for blog owners: if you choose not to use comment certification (all that entering 'buisfnark' from the picture before your comment is accepted), you have to tidy up after the jerks every now and then. It's an annoyance - particularly as they dump rubbish like commercials for property on recipes for fillet steak in red wine sauce.

To my delight, today's comment spammer was dork enough to have registered the website in his own daft name. A quick WHOIS database lookup tells us that his property website is registered to:

Florin Campulungeanu (gagiu@eim.ae)
971504785426
Fax:
Al Barsha
Dubai, 29948
AE

So, having his mobile number I called him up and let him know what I think of him, his website and his content spam. He claimed it wasn't his site. I pointed out that he was the administrator and the registrant and therefore liable for anything that happened in his name on that site. He said he'd just done a favour for a friend. I told him he was either remarkably naive or lying, but that I tended to drop down the slope towards the latter.

And then I posted a complaint with his contacts on The Fat Expat, the UAE Community Blog and this blog. I also put in a block request to Etisalat, which was pure badness on my part, but let's see what happens. The Etisalat complaint reference is 3712281.

I do hate spammers. But there's only one thing worse than a spammer - a dumb spammer. And you have to be pretty dumb to qualify!

Do, if you agree with me on the subject of spam, feel free to give Florin a call. His mobile's probably off by now, but you can always send him an email...

(Oh! Sorry to have put your full email address on this! gagiu@eim.ae wasn't it? Have fun, bots...)

Are You Getting the Salik Message?

As predicted earlier, the SMS infrastructure that's underpinning the Salik road toll in Dubai has been providing some unscheduled summer surprises, with Gulf News reporting (one suspects a touch gleefully, if the truth be told) on the hapless punters whose mobiles have been flooded with huge quantities of SMSs originating from the Road and Transport Authority (RTA).

Now getting SMS spam is bad enough (it's still an occasional annoyance in the UAE, although nothing like the constant stream we used to get). But these people have been receiving over a hundred texts overnight! Can you imagine what it feels like to get a tsunami of SMS spam from the people behind the universally popular and well regarded road toll scheme?

I bet it had them hopping, I really do...

I still haven't got my activation message. I wonder how they're doing with that data entry? >;0)