Online Idiots

Must be that time of year again…..I’m not sure why my Facebook friends insist on posting these things, since 99% of the time I’m posting Snopes back at them…..anyway:

Not true, not really.  Seems last year Nestle’s France office recalled ONE lot of Banana baby food after one piece of glass was found.  The recall was confined to France only, and the batch code was different than those in the various email and Facebook forwards going around (according to Snopes theres at least one other version ending in 6).  No American batches were included at all. 

Please please please check your facts before reposting/forwarding such things people.

This is making the rounds again, I saw it a couple years ago as an email forward, now its on Facebook:

Unfortunately, as cool an idea as it is, its false.

Although the concept appears to catch peoples’ attention the attempts to make it happen never manage to get anywhere.  All that putting your PIN in backwards will get you is an “incorrect PIN” message.

Just a warning for folks.  I was cleaning out an old yahoo account today, I keep it around just to keep it mine and make sure no one hacks it, but haven’t actually used it in years.  So imagine my surprise when I opened it up today to clean out the spam and discovered 5 very realistic looking emails.  One from appeared to be from Foursquare with a friend request, two apparently from Youtube with notices about video’s uploaded, and two apparently from Amazon about order cancelations.

At first glance I was a bit concerned that someone had hacked the email, but after a second look I realized it was an experienced spammer trying to get personal information.  Please note that I said in all cases above “appeared”.  Even the sending email addresses had been spoofed to appear identical to those actually sent from the companies.  However a quick look at the LINKS in each email showed the actual addresses linked to were NOT those from the companies.  Just to be sure I hit all three company websites (by typing in the addresses thank you very much) and attempted a password reset using my Yahoo email.  All three stated no account with that email.

Moral of the story and a reminder to everyone:  DO NOT EVER CLICK LINKS IN EMAILS.  ALWAYS TYPE IN THE ADDRESS YOURSELF, EVEN IF THE EMAIL APPEARS TO BE REAL.  If its a real notice from the company you will be able to find the information with out to much fuss from your account page.

But the one I got last night tickled my funny bone

Hello,

My name is Grace and I recently stumbled across your blog pointsofcompass.blogspot.com. I work for a company, Blog Services Inc., that connects bloggers with advertising partners. I currently have clients that are interested in sponsoring a few posts. This helps them with brand awareness and is a great opportunity for you to make some money from your blog.

Check out BlogServicesInc.org for more information and testimonials. Please feel free to contact me directly if you are interested in a partnership or have any questions at xxxxx@xxxxx.org. There is no need to submit the form on our site, as contacting me directly will lead to a quicker response.

If you are interested, contact me at this email address to begin the process.

Best, Grace Campbell Project Manager – Blog Services, Inc.

 Now I deliberately undid all links except to the blog in question, and blocked out the email address.  But anyone else see a problem with that email?  Anyone?

Yah.  You know, if you’re going to try to sell me something for my blog, it would help if you could at least email me about the right blog……

I mentioned a while back that I try to go through the Spam folder once a week or so to make sure that nothing important got caught in there.  In that post I talked about the fake AARP offers…..

Well, I’m a little behind on my Spam folder, so how about we take a look at what I’m getting today:

Hey, AT&T wants me to buy a smart phone from them, but hey, the email is “microwave at whitegloveaudience.com”  how weird….

Match.com is trying to get me to sign up, except THEIR email is “innovativeoptimum at whitegloveaudience.com” ….


Orchard Bank wants me to get a credit card from them, from an email: “continental at whitegloveaudience.com”  



(I’m sensing a trend here….)


Hey, Overstock wants to me know about a sale…..from “logicalretrieve at whitegloveaudience.com” 


(hmmmmmmm)


Get a NEW CELL PHONE PLAN from an unnamed company with the email: “mostnamed at whitegloveaudience.com”

Hey, Lasik knows I have to wear glasses!!! (“assessment at whitegloveaudience.com”)

Hey, another AT&T add, at least this one used a different email host: “info at superiormanagementconsultant.com” 

Hey, I was thinking I needed a new dentist: “leisurevirtue at whitegloveaudience.com” 

WhiteGloveAudience also apparently does Christian Mingle, Affordable Healthcare rates, Golf Fuel, and probly a bunch more but I got tired of clicking on spam.  When I looked at the actual links that clicking would have taken me too, well, I won’t post them, but some of the titles were rather, um, adult looking, and the one “unsubscribe” I clicked on to see where it took me redirected to what sure LOOKED like an unsubscribe link….at a redirected address…..(no I did not put my email in it, though I’m tempted to put my boss’s in just to see what happens). 

The joys of digging through the spam bin….. 

This one affects gunnies, so hopefully you all will help spread the reality.

I actually saw this posted on someones blog that I was perusing via the Gun Blog Black list, don’t recall where though, and at the time didn’t have the energy to follow up on it, and of course forgot to save the link so I could go back and look further.  But apparently there’s a rumor that thieves are targeting gunnies by putting red dots on their cars and then following them and breaking in.  Hsoi was curious as it was supposedly happening not to far from him.  So he did some digging.  And he couldn’t find anything to back up the information, but he DID find this.  So lets help end this particular rumor before it spreads to much further ok?

Did I mention that I hate people spreading miss-information?

So, a friend of a friend posted and shared that AAA is offering Tipsy Tows on New Years, NATION WIDE!!!!

Which isn’t actually the case.

So, the northern CA AAA (which covers northern Cali, Nevada and Utah) offers them on specific holidays.  TX AAA offers them on New Years and 4th of July.  Florida AAA (which covers FL, GA, and parts of TN) offers a Tow To Go on specific holidays (or they did as of almost two years ago when I worked for AAA, so I’m pretty confident of that info despite the information in the first linked article).  The first linked article states that they actually checked with an AAA rep who told them that also Hawaii, New Mexico, and Alabama also offer Tipsy Tows.  As far as I know none of the New England, New York or east coast AAAs (other than FL) offer Tipsy Tows at all.  In fact in one article the North Carolina club states that they USED to do them and had to stop due to abuse of the system.

So if you happen to see that set of posts on Facebook do me a favor and tell folks to stop spreading incorrect information.  The folks answering the phones at AAA overnight on New Years Eve/New Years morning will thank you.

If you think your area might offer them call your local AAA office to find out for sure (NOT the 800# in the articles, lookup the actual number for your actual local office, they’re going to have the most accurate information for your area).

I just un-friended someone on Facebook over this one.  She’s staunchly vegetarian/vegan and regularly posts articles on the evils of eating meats, I’ve mostly ignored her but this one got to me.  When I asked her if she’d read any of the attached/mentioned articles or studies her response boiled down to “of course not”.  Now I have no problem with someone who prefers a vegetarian or vegan lifestyles, or someone who only eats organic meats, but stop the rumormongering and scare tactics people.

Back in June the FDA issued a concern about the levels of in-organic arsenic in chickens slaughtered for human food.  Small amounts of arsenic are in some medicated feeds because it kills a variety of intestinal parasites and helps the birds gain weight.  Previously it was thought that the arsenic was completely excreted in the birds waste, so after an appropriate period of time without the medicated feed the birds would be arsenic free.  But studies confirmed that even after the 5-day “washout” period that wasn’t the case.  Studies found that levels of arsenic in chicken muscle and livers was quite a bit higher in birds fed Pfizer’s 3-Nitro medicated feed than those who weren’t.  HOWEVER after the 5 day washout period the amount of in-organic arsenic in chicken muscle meat was on average 252 ppb, the governmental approved tolerance is 500ppb.  Now true, the liver was a different story, after the 5 day washout period the amounts of in-organic arsenic in the medicated chickens’ livers ranged from 300ppb to 2900ppb (the average was less than 2000ppb) with a governmental approved tolerance of 2000ppb.  So what does this mean?  Since chicken liver isn’t the most highly consumed portion of the chicken most people don’t even need to consider this to worry about it, if however you do consume a large amount of ground chicken products you may want to consider the source of the meat.  HOWEVER since not every chicken grower uses these feeds (Purdue for example doesn’t) its even less likely that it was an issue.

Yes, I said “was” see, Pfizer pulled its 3-Nitro off the market after this release.  Now yes, there are other medicated feeds on the market that contain some amounts of arsenic, but my previous statements stand, chicken muscle meat is safe to eat.  And really, if you’re that worried about in-organic arsenic in your diet, you need to stop drinking water.

Links:

WebMD

LA Times

FDA (includes links to the actual summeries with the scientific data)

Edited: She’s now telling everyone how immature I am to un-friend  her over an article.  No honey, its not the article that I really took offense at, it was your deliberate ignorance and the decision to use that ignorance as a scare tactic that I have a problem with.