Date: 16 Mar 2005 22:26:46 GMT From: Dave Hinz <DaveHinznospamcop.net> Subject: Re: Vintage SAAB Quiz: What's wrong with this picture?
On Wed, 16 Mar 2005 16:20:27 -0600, Shane Almeida <almeida.spam.is.evilnospam.is.evil.mindless.com> wrote: > On Wed, 16 Mar 2005 22:05:00 GMT, Goran Larsson wrote: >> I didn't continue looking after the first wrong thing -- the url. >> The nospam entity is *evil* and I will never follow any of their >> suspect links. >> >>| Hide your affiliate URLs >>| >>| Are you posting something that you don't want people to know what the >>| URL is because it might give away that it's an affiliate link. Then you >>| can enter a URL into TinyURL, and your affiliate link will be hidden >>| from the visitor, only the nospam.com address and the ending address >>| will be visible to your visitors. >> >> Why should anyone trust these urls after reading this text on nospam.com? > > Because some people aren't overly paranoid? Long URLs are a hassle, copy/paste works equally well with a character, or a line. > especially in email and newsgroups where things can be wrapped > unpredictably. A URL is pretty easy to recognize wrap in, and to reconstruct. > Having a nice short URL is convenient because I can copy > it from my text-only news reader and paste it to my browser without > worrying about line breaks messing things up. Or, wrap it <like this> and that works too. Or let people fix wrap if their newsreader causes it; this won't be new to them. Goran's point about it being used to hide affiliate links is valid. Someone I know well and trust, such as Paul, I don't worry about that from. Some random link from some random person? Nope, I'll pass. And if it _is_ an affiliate link or the message smells spammy, I'll investigate and report. Amazon, in particular, really really doesn't like affiliates who spam, for instance.