Sponsor's Message

Yesterday I came across a spam from one of those sites that wants to set up reciprocal links -- in the full and certain knowledge that such links will boost their ranking in Google.

According to this email, the site in question had already linked to my site (although they didn't say which of my sites) and I could see that link on a webpage at their site, providing the URL for me to check.

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The spammer's domain name clearly suggested that they were in the holiday and travel business so, when I visited the URL offered, I was expecting to see a very long list of links to high-traffic websites that were totally unrelated to travel -- after all, I don't have any travel sites.

Knock me down with a feather -- but all the sites linked to were well targeted and dealt with holiday cruises.

Once again I wondered how on earth any of my sites would fit into this list -- until I saw the link to "DIY Cruise Missile".

Yes, the page I was looking at was clearly the work of an automated system that simply did a Google search on the word "cruise" and built a list of links to the highest ranking results. It then obviously looked up the domain name contact address and sent an automated email to it suggesting the reciprocal link.

Clearly there's no way a human being even checked the results of this process and I suspect it's the results of one of those "Get you websirt lizted on Google" spams that seem to also clutter my mailbox.

In a way you have to admire the entrepreneurial skills of anyone who'd go to the trouble of writing then marketing such a system -- but you also have to query the ethics of selling software that would send automated spam to domain name holders and link your holiday/travel site to a DIY cruise missile project :-)

I'm not going to tell the site concerned about their faux pas, I consider it to be a small victory against spam.

Don't give them ideas
It appears that in the UK the government are mooting the prospect of an annual PC tax to replace the existing TV licence at some time in the future.

Given our present government's propensity to tax the snot out of us at every turn, I'd hate to think that anyone in Helen's inner-circle would read this. We all know that the government (or at least NZ On Air) considers net content (be it audio or video) not to be worthy of funding in the same way as TV or radio content so it would make sense to further kick us by imposing a tax.

Maybe it could be called "The child porn prevention levy" and justified to the angry masses by claiming that it would go towards hanging, drawing and quartering the huge numbers of kiddy-pornsters that lurk within our ranks.

Bookmark this column -- you never know when I might end up saying "I told you so".

Lighten Up
Oh come on you guys -- my Lighten-up folder is virtually bare. Remember you only get as good as you give.

Here's an amusing spoof on Microsft's Licensing terms.

Now send me your best/worst for next week.

Aardvark Forums
The forums are back up at: www.aardvarkforums.co.nz/forums, have your say on today's column

Unfortunately you'll have to re-register because we're starting the new year with a complete reinstall.

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