28 February 2011 (Monday) - Spam

When I’m on a late start I usually read the news over brekkie. Would you believe that I was there last Saturday for two of today’s top stories? First of all was the tale of the fox that was living on the seventy-second floor of a skyscraper being built. We could clearly see that skyscraper from the Tower of London two days ago. And then there was the tale of breast milk ice cream, made and sold in the shop in Covent Garden where I got my ice cream last Saturday.

In with my thousands of spam emails this morning I had two emails from my internet provider warning me that two of my email accounts are about to be closed because I’ve not logged into them for months. Or so the internet provider says. The fact my PC logs into them every ten minutes is (presumably) neither here nor there.

On reflection I only ever set up those accounts for the free web space the accounts offered, and I’ve since stopped using that web space anyway. I’m pretty sure I’ve never used either email account for years, and both of them are doing nothing but attracting hundreds of spam emails every day. So I shall let those two accounts expire. If anyone has been emailing me with an email address which has includes the phrases “dansden” or “house2” (note the 2 !!) please contact me to get my current email address, as these two are defunct with immediate effect.

I then spent a little while looking at what email accounts I use to log into things like Blogger, Google, eBay, Wikipedia, Filth-R-Us, Twitter and the like. I then removed all references to my second Freeserve account with a view to getting rid of that one as well.

Having changed my various Internet log-ins, this second Freeserve account isn’t quite redundant. There is still 12Mb worth of web-space associated with this account. Currently I use it for photographs from previous Bat-Camps, and one or two other web-based projects. But I’m sure that if I smile sweetly at one of my loyal readers I can grovel up some web space on another server. I’m hoping to do so because if I can, when the time comes I might be able to let my second Freeserve account go as well.

Hopefully this will reduce the amount of spam I’m getting. If it doesn’t then I shall take further steps. It’s interesting that between the two Freeserve accounts I’m keeping, Yahoo, Facebook, Nokia, Google, work and NHS net I’ve already got eight email addresses. The ones with Freeserve attract hundreds of spam emails every day; the others get maybe one spam email a day at most. Perhaps I should discontinue using my Freeserve email accounts altogether.

And so back to work. I always take a week off work over my birthday. Today I realised that I shall only be doing this twelve more times. Is it too soon to be counting down to retirement? I wouldn’t say that I hate my job, but like the young Vogon guard once commented, the hours are good but ..
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Once at work we got the scales out and had the podge-a-thon weigh-in. Having had a week’s pigging out on curry, Wetherspoons (twice), KFC (twice) and McDonalds (twice) my weight is what it was ten days ago. How does that work?

A late start meant a late finish. I came home to a quiet house. The parrot’s gone back to her owners. I really miss her….