Noticed recently I was getting posts to my FunWall in Facebook sent to my email - and when I responded and clicked a link to my Funwall, I usually saw a pornographic picture or animated gif - which was puzzling based on who it appeared to come from - and so, often, I, like so many others, made the mistake of pushing the "next" button and ended up sending the pornographic message to several of my friends.
Well, allfacebook.com 's Notifications Are the New Spam covers exactly why this is happening so much lately:
According to my notifications, one of my friends took the “favorite sexual positions” quiz on Saturday. Honestly, I have no desire to “see how similar” I am in responding to their quiz. I have been speaking with a number of people recently who continue to get inundated with notifications from applications. There are only a couple applications that are currently bombarding me with new notifications and I have to build filters in my inbox to avoid them.
Previously aggressive application developers were using misleading application requests and invites to gain new users. Slowly those applications had their spam levels turned down by new Facebook policies. Look for new protections against notification spam to be created by Facebook. I have no desire to know that my friends took a quiz on Likeness nor do I have any desire to view “HOTorNOT Hotties of the Day.”
Having fallen into the trap, myself, a few times, I had already decided to write about it - just hadn't gotten to it till now - glad it's being addressed becuase the spam issue dilutes my enjoyment of Facebook.
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You hit the nail on the head with that last sentence. At first the various applications were cute but there are just so many of them. Its exhausting and time consuming to go delete all that crap. I actually went through and removed several applications. I also spend less time on facebook than I did when I first joined. Social networking burnout came quicker than with MySpace and I'm pretty sure its because of all the spam.
Posted by: Kimberlee Morrison | April 16, 2008 2:44 AM | Permalink to Comment