purporting to come from a friend, ignore it. It seems to be some sort of viral spam.
… purporting to come from a friend, ignore it. It seems to be some sort of viral spam, from an outfit called InfoAxe. I seem to have hit the wrong button and needlessly annoyed some of my contacts.
Author: Mark Kleiman
Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out.
Books:
Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken)
When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist
Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993)
Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989)
UCLA Homepage
Curriculum Vitae
Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com
View all posts by Mark Kleiman
Thanks for this post. I got the email and did some investigating. They claim to have been recommended by Mozilla, yet in doing a search, it's obviously not the case.
Thanks. I got the email too and found it odd. I poked a bit and pretty soon it was asking me for my gmail log in information. "WHOA NELLIE!" sez I! I headed over to RBC and my suspicions were confirmed.
Thankfully, I dropped in here before checking my email, or it would have got me.
I got it too and was going to email you if you didn't post about it. But you did. Thanks.
this is a pretty goodSlate article on the general thing though it doesn't talk about Feed Share specifically.
i think what makes social spam effective is both the recognition but also the sense of obligation. i hate most web 2.0 stuff, but i always feel like i have to send an "it's not that i don't like you, it's just that i don't like the service" apology to people i know who ask me to join facebook or that kind of thing. it's funny how well crafted the message was to exploit feelings of solidarity, what with "Is Mark Kleiman your friend?" and "Please respond or Mark Kleiman may think you said no :("
it also seems like a truly horrible service even if you take it on face value. just about the last thing i would want is for all my friends/colleagues to know what websites i visit ad it's not even like i go to porn sites or anything like that.
Thanks for the link, gabriel r, and I take your point — I would feel a bit sheepish if some of my contacts discovered what a big Green Day fan I've become!
When I read the original Feed Share message, I did think the “Please respond or Mark Kleiman may think you said no 🙁 ” was a bit much, a nudge too far if you will.