Written March 2011
by Cliff Feldwick
It isn’t enough, apparently, that over 80% of emails are
spam, often rising to 90% in times of virus infestations or fake “alerts” Nope,
now spam is taking over websites as well.
Spam websites are those deliberately created to sell bogus
products or opinions. They are often well constructed and optimized so they
come up high in the search engines, and look believable. But they’re spam.
Anyone looking for health information on the web has
encountered this firsthand. Unless you start your search in a respected site
like the National Institute of Health (www.nih.gov) or the Mayo Clinic (www.mayoclinic.com),
you’re likely to run into dubious (at best) sites promoting the healing effects
of recycled radioactive rabbit pellets for your arthritis. And we’re not even
looking at the “buy herbal Viagra” and “Canadian pharmaceutical” websites,
although they serve as perfect examples of spam. Those are just too obvious.
Other often less-than-truthful topics are product or restaurant
reviews and “tech tips”.
Part of the problem is the sheer volume of websites, and the
resultant lack of “policing” by the search engines to see what is real and what
is junk (even if you trusted their opinion). Statistics from the Netcraft February
2011 web server survey showed 284 million registered hostnames worldwide, with
40% of those actually active. The rest, of course, are “under construction”. Over
11 million were added in January alone.
The other problem is the rise of gaming by the spammers to
push their sites up in Google or other searches. One of the ways to make your
site popular is by increasing the number of links to and from your site to
other sites. Another way is to have people actually “click through” from a
search to your site. So the spammers hire people (often using web-based employment
sites) to click on their sites for a nickel per click. They also link to each
other, in a giant back-scratching exercise.
Accuracy – we’ve
heard of that
Some results of this are comical, in a twisted sort of way.
If you followed the revelations about a Virginia
history textbook that had to be yanked from classrooms because it said
thousands of slaves voluntarily fought for the Confederacy, you’ve seen this.
The author got her information on this topic from the website of the Sons of
Confederate Veterans, a group not customarily known for their high regard for
accuracy if it interferes with a good story, or at least their version of life.
When actual historians looked at this they went gaga. The publisher eventually
had to replace all the books sold. Amusing.
Of course, if someone you love is fooled by a website
offering herbal cures for cancer, you’re not going to be as amused. So this is
a real problem.
The question is also raised as to whether a younger
generation that uses web searches for everything and hasn’t developed the
correct sense of skepticism (read: having gotten burned) will be vulnerable to
beautifully crafted sites with dubious intentions. Similar, in a way, to the
prohibition by many schools of the use of Wikipedia as a research source, in an
effort to force deeper work.
A few antidotes
OK, on a brighter note, let’s look at a few sites that never
fail to inspire and impress with their depth of interesting thinking.
The RSA is the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts,
Manufactures and Commerce. It’s British (pip, pip) and dates back to 1754, and
yet hosts talks on very contemporary topics. Go to www.theRSA.org for topics.
One of the most entertaining parts of the site is RSA animates, where a very
talented cartoonist follows along with the speaker and illustrates their
thoughts in real time, on everything from education to language and thinking.
You can also find them on YouTube. If you want to really get worked up, depending
on your views, try “Smile or Die”. If you’re a fan of “The Secret” and its way
of thinking you’ll want to protect your screen from the things you may throw at
it. If you’ve ever faced a layoff, you’ll cheer. Highly recommended.
Another positive place to go for enlightenment (and not the
chemical kind) is Ted.com. TED calls itself “Ideas worth spreading” and hosts
talks by all kinds of fascinating people, from former diplomat Madeline
Albright to a man who trained rats to sniff out land mines, to a performance of
Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” on a ukulele. There are talks on technology,
medicine, social networking (a big, big topic), music and humor. These are
filmed at conferences that TED hosts worldwide. Interestingly enough, you have
to apply to join TED before you can attend. And it’s not cheap – their 2011
conference costs $500 just for the webcast. So I highly recommend the free
website.
So there you have it: the Web - a source of junk,
intellectual fascination and even a ukulele or two. Just be careful what you
believe.
Cliff Feldwick is president of Riverside Computer
Consultants and provides PC help, troubleshooting, data recovery and network
setups, when not being completely amazed by the variety (and junk) on the
Internet. He can be reached at 410-880-0171 or at cliff@feldwick.com.