Nate On The Net

I have no idea who Don Lapre actually is – he’s some sort of infomercial vitamin-selling scammer dude according to wikipedia. Anyway, somebody left a hand-crafted spam comment on my SORBS post today which actually referenced the content of the post, but the format of the signature was a bit strange so I jumped to the linked website (donlaprewilliams.com) before I even knew Don Lapre existed. The site is pretty strange, as it seems to be leaching content through an iFrame from carpeaqua.com and the only actual content on the page is a couple of header tags mentioning Lapre and some sort of salad dressing blurb that makes no sense. There are no actual outgoing links from this page, so I can’t figure out what the s[p/c]ammer is hoping to promote by doing this.

A bit of searching reveals another domain registered on the same day (donlaprejones.com) which is leaching content in an iFrame from sashafrerejones.com (some sort of musician, I think). This site contains the same salad dressing nonsense and no outgoing links. Whois checks don’t reveal anything useful, other than that they’re Go Daddy domains (what a stupid name for a company).

Maybe the s[p/c]ammer is intending to build up the pagerank of these pages and then use them to promote some stupid vitamin-selling scheme? Anyway, nice try, but that comment is history. And perhaps the webmasters at carpeaqua and sashafrerejones might want to do some creative rewrite rules to block the leaching.

Moral of the story: I fucking despise sleazy advertisers.

Update – 06/16/2011

Seems like karma caught up with this dude – just spotted a story saying he’s been charged with fraud to the tune of $52 million. Why does that not surprise me?

Not that I really expect more out of a site like MySpace, but as it seems to be ever more a necessary social evil these days, I have a profile there. Anyway, I want to add my University of Toronto time to my profile for networking purposes, but the only school it will allow is “University of Toronto Schools” which is a real institution that is NOT the same as the actual University of Toronto.

I first noticed this almost 2 years ago and submitted the actual University of Toronto as a school, but to no avail. A few months ago I emailed them about it and was told that “they’d look into it” and that in the meantime I should submit the UofT as a school.

A bit of googling and talking to my UofT friends says that most people gave up and just used the UTS school instead, but I’m too stubborn for that.

I’m not even sure why I’m bothering to complain, but it feels good to vent this minor frustration. And yet, MySpace is clearly beneath my 1337ness and I don’t know why I have a profile there to begin with…so torn!