Tag Archives: rant

Spammers are hitting my website again. And this time they’re DANGEROUS.

Lowlife spammers are bugging me again.

spammers are lowlife
the lowlife ranking of a spammer

Each day I’m spending my time trashing their messages. I open my dashboard and there they are again with their generic messages.

Fifty messages per day, sometimes.

Last time I got hit, the messages were about shoes and sunglasses etc. See previous post. Hand-held magnifiers and the like are fairly innocuous. Targetted spamming might well make me a likely prospect for showing interest in wanting to buy one of those. It’s ageism, of course, but pretty harmless.

BUT,

These spammer guys are DANGEROUS.

Here’s a list of what I’m being offered by the latest rash of spammers:

tramadol, lorazepam, xanax, ativan, ambien, klonopin, hydrocodone cough syrup, zolpidem and viagra.

I hadn’t heard of some of these. I did some research.

What is lorazepam?

Lorazepam is in a group of drugs called benzodiazepines (ben-zoe-dye-AZE-eh-peens). It affects chemicals in the brain that may become unbalanced and cause anxiety.

Lorazepam is used to treat anxiety disorders.

Important information about lorazepam

Do not use this medication if you are allergic to lorazepam or to other benzodiazepines, such as alprazolam (Xanax), chlordiazepoxide (Librium), clorazepate (Tranxene), diazepam (Valium), or oxazepam (Serax). This medication can cause birth defects in an unborn baby. Do not use lorazepam if you are pregnant.

Before taking lorazepam, tell your doctor if you have any breathing problems, glaucoma, kidney or liver disease, or a history of depression, suicidal thoughts, or addiction to drugs or alcohol.

Do not drink alcohol while taking lorazepam. This medication can increase the effects of alcohol.

Avoid using other medicines that make you sleepy. They can add to sleepiness caused by lorazepam.

Lorazepam may be habit-forming and should be used only by the person it was prescribed for. Lorazepam should never be shared with another person, especially someone who has a history of drug abuse or addiction. Keep the medication in a secure place where others cannot get to it.

How can we allow this?

So, it’s okay, is it, to offer these dangerous drugs online? Habit-forming antidepressants like lorazepam, xanax and ativan? Sedatives like ambien, which can also cause serious side effects. Klonopin is a sleeping pill. Zolpidem is a trade name for ambien.

This is one extremely dangerous cocktail of drugs available online. They are habit-forming. They can cause birth defects.

Who are these low-lifes who take payment for sending out all this spam? Here’s a diagram showing how spammers get paid.

viagra spammer
how spammers get paid

There must be a way to stop this. There has to be a way to interrupt the supply chain. After all, legitimate pharmaceutical companies manufacture these drugs. You might question why they don’t know who they’re supplying.

The problem is, as the diagram explains, the patent has expired on many of these medications. This means seedy laboratories out to make a quick buck can make their own versions. That isn’t illegal. It is illegal to use another company’s registered trade name and copy their packaging. That’s piracy.

But the biggest crime in all of this, it seems to me, is being part of a system that allows people to buy online as much as they want of dangerous drugs that should be strictly controlled.

I’d like to grab these spammers and shove a packet of their own sedatives where the sun don’t shine. It’s dirty money you’re taking, people.

Surely, whenever money is changing hands like this, there’s a way to track these nasty businesses and close them down.

Click the Tweet button to pass this message to your Twitter groups.

Blogging? Blogging? Give me a break

This is me.cabbageGreen as. Thought I’d got it sorted, did I? Knew all about blogging, did I? Getting all smug over the SEO stuff and plug-ins and talking like I know what I’m talking about? Wake up, girl. Sorry, that should be: Wake up, GRANDMA! You don’t know the half of it. There are people out there who’ve known this stuff since they were in primary school. There are kids could laugh you into the middle of next week. There are TODDLERS, dammit, who know more computer-speak than you do.  Kids who were blogging before they’d learned how to help with the washing up. There are generations of whizz-kids out there who have known this stuff since they were in nappies. ( Are they still called whizz-kids? Probably not)

See how out of touch I am? See what a numpty? Here’s another picture of me looking green.

cabbageface
green as grass AND cabbage-looking

 

That’s me told, then. That’s me wrung out and hung out to dry. So, while you’re up there, Grandma, remember this: there is ALWAYS something new to learn.

If you joined an evening class and went to learn how to, let’s say, build a rabbit hutch, you’d expect to come across unfamiliar terminology, never having built anything in your life before. Never having held a saw or a hammer or bashed in a nail with one end of it. But at least you’d know what a hammer was. You’d know what all the relevant tools were called and what they looked like as well as the job you were expected to do with them.

I’ve heard of chicken wire – I think I’d know where to go buy some.  I don’t know how to chicletize my website. WTF? I thought chicklets were what you gave the kids to eat when you were too tired to cook. I don’t KNOW what a feedburner is, so what’s the point in telling me to use one? I wouldn’t know one if it was hanging out my arse. I know what a log burner is. Will that help?

But, as I already said, there are people out there who’ve been au fait with all this stuff since before the dawn of the century. How did I ever think I’d be able to get up to speed with it in a matter of weeks? It’s true what they say about ignorance. It’s bliss!

Celia Letting off steam

You have to let go of your bad feelings. When you get all steamed up, you have to vent. If you let your characters vent steam so they don’t read like little Goody-Two-Shoes, why don’t you allow yourself the same outlet?

Here goes: to whom it may concern.

Your husband is buying you a new car, is he? That’s nice. Going skiing, are you? That’s nice. Having a new kitchen fitted while you’re away, are you? That’s nice.You’ll be eating out at a restaurant where it’s only 55 euro a head, every night? That’s nice.

fill your boots
fill your boots

Ahhhhh, that is SO much better!

Things that get me ranting . . .

Shampoo bottles. And conditioner bottles. Why don’t manufacturers stick to one method of letting you know which is which when you’re in the shower without your reading glasses? Because, I don’t know anybody who needs reading glasses who actually wears them in the shower. What would be the point? They’d get all steamed up. So, there you are, in the shower, naked and helpless as . . . and you reach out for the bottle you need and YOU CAN’T TELL WHICH IS WHICH!

conditioner1

how can you tell?

Some brands have the shampoo bottle sitting on its bottom and the corresponding bottle of conditioner sitting on its top, with the labels stuck on the other way around, if you see what I mean. But they don’t all do it like this. So, if you’re like me and you regularly change brands depending on what’s on special offer down the haircare aisle and because the magazines tell you NOT to use the same brand all the time or you’ll get BUILD-UP whatever that is, and because you regularly use more conditioner than shampoo anyway, you’ll end up with a motley collection of bottles with bits of something inside them. BUT YOU WON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS. Not if you’re in the shower without your reading glasses!

Ahh!