Poisoned Websites: a list of “Hunger Games” and “Titanic” websites you’ll want to avoid
7 Rules For Recording the Police – and how not to get arrested for doing it
The Tale of the Tombstone: the fight over Lee Harvey Oswald’s grave marker
Lindsay Lohan is suing Pitbull, a rapper who mocks her in one of his songs — She claims the song has caused her “tremendous emotional distress,” and that it damages her reputation as “an actress of good repute.” Okay, that last part of her claim might be a stretch; but the issue remains: does Pitbull (or Eminem, who sang “Hello Lindsay you’re looking a little thin, hun’; How about a ride to rehab?”) have an absolute First Amendment right to make satirical references to celebrities in his songs?
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© 2012 by Bill Bickel unless otherwise noted.
That “list of websites” is actually just a list of search terms that will also bring up valid search results. Searching for “titanic soundtrack” is not inherently dangerous.
Indiscriminately clicking on search results is always risky, no matter what you are searching for.
Those aren’t search terms, but subject lines of spam e-mails that take you to the sites.
First, no where in the article does it say these are subject lines of spam e-mails; in fact, no context is provided until the “poisoned link” reference at the very end of the article, which is still very vague.
Second, the article just says to “avoid” a list of terms – how is this helpful? There are general rules for how to identify and handle SPAM, and a list of terms that might appear in the title is just about the worst way to try to quantify these rules. If someone actually followed this guidance, they might think it would be ok to click something not on this list, like say “Hunger Games behind the scenes”, which could easily contain a poisoned link. This is just not how you deal with SPAM.
Finally, this is what people blog about? Really? Seems like just a bait-and-switch to capitalize on the popularity of these terms in searches to drive traffic to the blog, and potentially to Norton, which would not be my first defense. How about this – DON’T CLICK ON RANDOM UNTRUSTED LINKS FROM ANYONE, ESPECIALLY PEOPLE YOU DON’T KNOW, THAT PROMISE TITILLATING AND/OR FREE THINGS. But peddling common sense as a solution isn’t very sexy (or profitable).
Or successful.
I FIND THAT MOST SUCCESSFUL METHODS OF COMMUNICATION INVOLVE WRITING IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS.
If “email subjects” was the intended message then the message was delivered very poorly, since email was not mentioned in your summary or in the linked article.
You wrote “websites you’ll want to avoid”, and the article just mentioned links, which can appear in many places other than email.
I don’t know… seemed apparent to me, possibly because I’ve received those e-mails.
Lindsey Lohan is an actress? Really? I thought she was just a drunk who got charged with DUI three times.
You’re reading/watching the wrong media, then. Go watch the 1998 version of ‘The Parent Trap’, or ‘Mean Girls’, or ‘Herbie: Fully Loaded’.
Ah. Child actress-turned-drunk. (No, I haven’t seen any of those movies.)
Well, she’s a stay-at-home actress.