YET ANOTHER MEME TO BE WARY OF...

Before I go into that, here's something interesting I don't remember happening before (before the Great Russian Meme Meltdown)...only part of my style is loading. I'm using Opal, and when I click my page, the header bar is the only thing that appears. Everything loads when I hit 'refresh', though. Hell and tarnation. I will never, ever click another BIG SHINY BUTTON again. Ever. Which takes us to...

this is very interesting seems to be the newest "click here!" meme going around. I didn't click (I learned my lesson last night), but I'm going to take this directly from mickeym's journal.

There's a...meme? I guess? That has the subject line as "Interesting..."

The body of it says "this is interesting...", with 'this' being a link. If you click on it, it'll automatically update your LJ. You can't delete it--at least not from where I can figure out (though I freely admit I'm not the most techno-aware person in the world).

In comments, coolwhipdiva said that it took her about fifteen tries to finally delete it.

If you see this, better safe than sorry. Pass it by. I just took a spin around my friends list, and it's there about four or five times. Here's the URL it links to, if a techie out there wants to look into it (with spaces inserted so it's nonlinked...if you cut and paste after this warning, you can't blame me):

http: // sneak.datavibe.net / misc / lj /

Here's an update on the Russian meme from last night. An unusually speedy response. Thanks to oshunanut for the update:

From the LJ Abuse team, about that meme:

LiveJournal developers have investigated the meme to which you refer and determined that it presents no security risk. It functions by running a script inside your web browser which posts to LiveJournal. At no time is your password transmitted, and your browser's "cookie", which identifies you to LiveJournal, is not transmitted either.

The Russian one (and even the newest one for all I know) might be "harmless" but sooner or later we're going to see one that's not quite so fluffy. Avoid, folks. Avoid.

See this entry for the back story on the Russian meme.

One last thing. If you clear cookies, your cache, blahblahblah and then log back into your LJ, though they advise binding to your ISP for maximum safety, the fabulous synecdochic explained in comments (in response to me whining about the "invalid cookies" message) why that's not always the best choice for everyone:

your IP address probably changes; you're probably on dynamic IP assignments. Which means that if you've selected "bind to IP", you'll be logged out, because your IP has changed. This means that it is functioning as designed :)

Just don't choose "bind to IP" and you'll be fine.

"this is very interesting" - DON'T CLICK

rosenho gives an update and tons of links on the subject of my earlier post, the new "this is interesting" faux meme.

Some people have *waaaay* too much time on their hands and nothing constructive to do with it.