What do dumpsters and the Slovakian language have in common?  SPAM.  Specifically comment spam.  Those who blog know of these terrible things and probably get a little giggle because they know exactly what I’m talking about.  It just recently turned to the Slovakian  I have had probably about 30 things regarding dumpsters for the past month alone. I was beginning to feel like it was telling me something.  Really? Garbage? Meh, maybe it was.

Then I thought about SPAM in general.  remember when that nice little email filter wasn’t there? How many pieces of it did you get a day?  It was annoying a Frell.  Then the filters. ahhhhhh, lovely little filters. Did we get them? Heck no, they still find a way in the inbox from time to time, but at least its far less than it used to be.

Pop-Ups. 1, 2, 3, 10 at one time? What have you been doing to get than many? As I joke I realize how annoying this really was and then the lovely pop-up blocker came into existance. And guess what? There are things called pop-unders and those are much harder to get rid of in general.  There isn’t any particular thing that can be done as a whole. They are completely legal because they are UNDER. Now what the difference is, I have no clue. Remember, I’m an internet idiot. A friend of mine suggested AdBlock as an extension  I think it may have helped, I don’t know. But it has helped the next annoyance.

Those stupid little video advertisements that start automatically and move across your screen. You know the one’s I’m talking about. The new shows, a new car, anything like that.That Adblock is great about that. But, I only know it for it Chrome application so I apologize if there is nothing similar for Explorer or Firefox.

Phishing.  It took me forever to figure out what that was. I was one of the lucky ones that happened to be too paranoid to really be affected (waiting for something to strike me down as an “I told you so”).  It could be the growing up in a military family and dealing with things of high security at all times. Or I’m just a paranoid old lady we’ll never know.

This is a fun word, Smishing. I swear I giggle at it when I attempt to say it. No matter how hard I try it comes out sounding nothing less than a made up word. Try to say it? How do you think it should be said?  What is this Smishing I’m talking about? Obviously its a nice brand new made up word for those crappy spam messages that are sent to our cell phones.   The first time I got one, it freaked me out. It used my name, and then told me to click on a link for free e-cigarettes.  It was very odd, first because the cell isn’t in my name, second because I have already stated I attempt to be very secretive, and third and most important is that I don’t even bloody smoke.  I have also received other ones “reminding” me that I have a job interview and sends the address in the message.  I have no use for the workplace, I like it just fine behind my desk writing and maybe making a little money to pay for the coffee I drink. So they have found a way to bypass email, pop-ups, the do-not-call registry.  YAY aren’t we special? I’d ask if these people had day jobs and realized that that probably IS their day job. Sad, just sad. All the crap, all the hacking even. All of it is for a job to annoy the crap outta someone or be so good at it the Government hires them. (This, coming from my retired military father, so I cannot confirm or deny what I just said).  But there is some kind of hope in a way. No, they won’t magically stop appearing on your phone. Here is something that you CAN do though. Hey wait, am I about to say something actual useful?  Report it immediately by forwarding the text to 7726, which spells out SPAM on most phones. That will send the information to a service that’s operated by the telephone companies, which use it to identify and shut down problems on their networks.

What other annoyances are out there that I have forgotten? I’m not talking about your mom or dad calling you way too much, because seriously all of them do and we unfortunately pick up wishing we hadn’t because we could care less that our cousin twice removed just went into the hospital. So we’ll just have to leave that one off the list