You’re so vain…I bet you think this spam is about you, baby

Spamming, as we’re sure you’ll agree, is a terrible thing.  So imagine our surprise when some of the more seasoned social media users came a cropper the other week, inadvertently clicking on a link that promised to ‘show you who was secretly viewing your profile’ on Facebook.

The tantalizing words such as ‘WOW, look who’s viewing your profile now!’ should have been enough of a give-away and the mere existence of Facebook Pages saying how this is technically impossible should have provided ample warning.

In fact, the words ‘WOW’ are normally sufficient in themselves to send even the most scantly-discerning user of Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms scurrying off to alert their friends to a spam-attack.

Not so with this one, though.  We at Umpf Towers (without the slightest hint of superiority, we can assure you), gazed on as friends clicked on the link and realised, red-faced, that they’d been conned and the link was just spam. Not only that, they had inadvertently showed all their friends that they really were concerned about who was covertly viewing their profile.

But what was it about this particular scam that was so appealing?  There was no free-food offer, promise of a half-price Thai bride or even a ‘virtual blessing’ from an online priest.  It was a popularity contest, pure and simple.

We’d stop short of saying that those that clicked on the link were vain. Far from it. But let’

s be honest, who wouldn’t want the slight ego massage of finding out how many adoring hundreds, nay thousands, of people were viewing our ever-so-interesting

profile, just like you can on Linkedin (see below).

I guess this serves as a timely reminder to us all – we might be strong enough to refuse the offer  of cut-price Viagara on spam emails, but we all love to be loved and this spam-tastic link proved just that.