Sooner or later this happens with every big service with a member messaging system that allows sending message to strangers: spam. I would describe my YouTube account usage as mostly inactive with only one video uploaded (1,500+ views now), a half dozen or so videos marked as favorite, a handful of videos embedded in our sites and I don’t believe I’ve ever commented on another video yet.

I wonder how much this spamming happens to active YouTube members?

Fortunately, we can block members (pictured with a pointing red arrow) who do things like this. Inside the My Profile settings there is a way to “block all email sent by YouTube.” I usually enable this option on sites with internal messaging where I’m not active (which is the vast majority of websites out there) or choose so that only people I mark as friends can contact me, if that’s an option. YouTube is not a viable way to contact me. Who can keep up with a bunch of different site specific messages for sites where they aren’t active? Not me.

Something I rarely bother to do, I actually checked out the site being spammed with browser condom fully enabled. Unsurprisingly it was a flash games site, but unlike most sites like this being spammed this one didn’t look too bad, but I didn’t stay long enough to try anything. Primary monetization method? Google Adsense.

Bad marketing idea sending strangers a message like “cool videos [site, etc], hey check out my new site here ___.” In fact, one even needs to be careful doing this with people he/she knows. This won’t be applicable to regular readership who I’m sure know better than this, but maybe a few passerbys that are new to web marketing will read this and go: ok, that’s something I shouldn’t do to promote my new site.

Can’t hurt anyway.

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