Now, what you want to do to people who post you spam even if you've clearly stated you do not want invites for stupid application or stupid chain e-mails is this:

..You send them everything back a hundred times. In FB join for every darn application and send invite to the person too thick to understand simple "Do not do that anymore, thank you". With e-mail, just hit answer and send copy and hidden copy to the same person. My friends learned from one experience such as that.

The thing about this thats really quite hilarious though is those practices were first engineered by the likes of Dell, HP, AOL, Publishers Clearinghouse and the like.

Have you ever got a computer with Norton antivirus and all those trial offers, microsoft office etc! Well after 30 days there on your computer, but do not work, and are still hogging resources. All of those companies also collect your information, and sell it. This is why you get spam regularly from websites you do not register on.

These practices are different on the front end but the same in the back. You can remove this kind of stuff if you know how. However; a normal consumer at least to the greatest percentage has no clue how to remove these things. They are also on the backup or recovery CD so if you have to reinstall anything they will reinstall as well automatically.

Gates is now giving away most of his ill-gotten funds to charity, I suppose, in an attack of conscience?

Nah. He is using most of his fortune to stall all the lawsuits which would put him in prison for a very long time, right alongside the likes of Conrad Black and David Radler and their ilk.

He's probably thinking up a new way to scam the unsuspecting public by putting out some new inferior product and (illegally) taking top market share.

@Mary Marsala with Fries: And I'm only replying to tell you that you're an idiot, otherwise your post is unworthy of a reply.

I am one of the unfortunate morons that falls for these Zynga "scams"...justthis evening, while playing Vampires, I saw an ability for sale that I HAD to have. So i went over to the page that usually contains all of the offers (sign up for free points)...AND THEY WERE ALL GONE!!!

Most of my friends/family are smart enough to do most of, if not all, of the same. So, what information are they getting from me, exactly? What city I live in? What movies I like? Nothing I lose sleep over.

YES! I personally would like no Glee updates and no sports-related updates. Most especially, people who give detailed accounts of their fantasy football stats.

@gcas: I think they can take some blame when the game asks them for their credit card number. Some things raise huge red flags if they're on the Internet or not.

Malware is a different story, that's deplorable.

I greatly appreciate this article and its author, but if anyone thinks that scamming people is not an integral part of most business models, they need to take another look at for-profit business. It's part and parcel!

he did what our raw capitalism worshiping society taught him to do. make $$ hand over fist. fastest. ethics be damned.

there is not 1 company that does not behave the same way to various degrees. they're even stupid enough to get caught saying the same stupid things.

not going to change unless we change what we teach & more importantly, change what we reward.

privacy settings. study them. very useful :)

these scams have been around since the beginning. they've been reported on endlessly in all formats. to claim you had no idea & not a clue is utter horsesh*t.

however, i do not & will not spend my real world cash on any virtual world game product. figure there are sufficient fools willing to cough up real world cash for virtual world goods that they can subside the game. yeah, it's selfish. so is running a business for profit.

As an avid player of both Mafia Wars and Farmville this makes me a little angry at their general attitude. But at the same time the people who are paying for virtual dollars for a game need to feel a little foolish as well. Little bit of fool me once shame on you...fool me twice shame on me. Another commenter pointed out that if you just play the game its fun. If something sounds hinkey and smells hinkey it probably is hinkey.

let there be no mistake, mark pincus is an scummy douchey guy, fer sure.

@Etoiles: Sadly this means that I'd never hear from any of my friends on Facebook.

The list of apps you have blocked from your feed can be seen by clicking "Edit Options" at the bottom of your feed. Each app will be a hot link. Visit the page for each one (tedious, yes) and choose "block" (on the left). New crap deposited in your feed will have the hot link hidden in the timestamp.

I agree, its a pretty scummy move on Zynga's part (and probably why I haven't really been feeling up to planting my next crop lately).

At the same time I don't feel so bad for the people who get scammed in the process. In fact, I'd love to hand them the free vacation they just won, and offer them to keep some of the money they help me transfer from Africa. Some people out there are legitimately scammed and cheated, but at some point you have to draw the line and admit you own stupidity.

I get that it's a game you can play on your phone, and pay real money to level up or buy fake stuff? Or they sign you up for recurring charges you did not agree to? Oi.

BTW, whatever happened to chargebacks? Do people really just let it go because it was 'only' $10 or whatever?

A rare miss - a business plan that makes money is never flawed. Morally questionable or objectionable... but not flawed.

@jpdanzig: then why would you even post a comment?!?

"Hay guys!! Wanna let yous know I gots no idea what cher talkin bout and ain't got nuffin to say..."

Actually you can block apps...on your homepage, the "Requests" on the top right hand side will show all apps you've been sent from friends...just click "Block" and that particular app will be blocked from your account.

The interesting thing to this is that when I tell my top of the line techno friends this, they tell me the same thing. They skip right on by Zynga help wanted ads.

Except, all the time.

Just to correct this. This "Remove" or "Hide" only works on a per person basis. So if you have two people in mafia wars, you must do this for both people. There is no way to just block the application itself. It only allows you to block the application announcements from that person.

Speaking of culture, I always thought Zynga was a bunch of Russians (you know, in Russia), making that game...thus, the lack of scrupulous behavior on the InterWebs. Instead, it's just a punk here in the states that believes the end most certainly justifies the means.

I agree, let the criminal prosecution against them begin...

And thus is a flaw in business school. They teach to stay afloat. Businesspeople need to realize that sometimes it's better to just shut your business down in an orderly fashion, or to rack up debt if you think you'll get thru it. Keeping your business alive isn't worth it if you feel ashamed of how you did it. This is often what leads people to prison - a big factor in a lot of the Enron fraud - desperately trying to rake in profits to keep their job when they should have just quit.

That's what business people have to remember - their morals need to come before their business. A lost business is just that - you don't go to prison for shutting it down.

So he purposely misled consumers. Can someone in the law field dig up the fraud law for this guy and go after him with it.

Now I have a great reason to say NO!

@aliminx: Me neither. I won't pay to play a game on there. I don't trust them with my credit card info.

I did "buy points" for one of Zynga's other games with some extra cellphone minutes and never got them, so I figured a lot of the extra options for getting resources were hinky.

Fortunately I figured out how to "hide" all these things so they don't bother me any more. But I just found the practice of scripting broadcasts into the game itself, distasteful. I'm glad I didn't break down and play any of these games.

Still, just needs a keyword filter and I'm golden.

Some scams are more intricate than others, but they all have the two key features: They offer you something for little or nothing, and they require you to step forward and take the bait.

Individuals such as Pincus, and outfits like Zynga are predatory cheats looking for marks, but at what point does the willing marks bear responsibility for their misfortunes?

Farmville rocks. I don't care what anyone says.

FishVille the newest Zynga game was briefly banned from Facebook this week until they revised their scamming ways [www.techcrunch.com]

@Areyouagoodlittleconsumer: Facebook is already revising their ad and privacy matters according to what tech crunch has been writing [www.techcrunch.com]

Maybe even circulate the flier in the room while the jackhole is talking? ha ha

Zynga gets more money from advertisers and users get a leg up in the games compared to people who just play them without any external or paid bonuses.

Casual players of these games don't have anything to fear or to lose. It's the people who get so invested in it that they'll pay real money or put themselves at risk who may have issues. That being said, I don't see how paying real money to play FB games is so different from paying a monthly fee for MMORPGs. It's not unprecedented for people to spend real money on virtual entertainment. All we're judging here is the types of games.

To me, the FB games are very much not worth real money, but that's an entirely subjective conclusion. I'm not going to judge what other people want to put money into. People flush their money down the crapper for pleasure everyday on pleasures that are of no lasting value - on beer, pizza, junk food, movies, cable television. Any pecking order we place on what is a "worthy" or "unworthy" use of money for entertainment is meaningless except to elevate our values above someone else's in an attempt to feel superior.

One of the first people that fell for his spiel was my daughter, who does her playing on one of the computers in my home network. Needless to say her "membership" was canceled immediately but I suppose they still had time to get whatever they wanted out of her.

I have a feeling he might be a little ticked off at me right now because I posted links to all of these articles on my wall but dammit he's old enough to recognize an Amway scam when he sees it.

With all the education available, it always saddens me to see people earning the hard way about letting unicorns prance without protection. Although given some of the folklore, I really have to wonder if that Trojan Horse had consent from the unicorn....

@flugennock: That's the next app they are developing for Facebook.

[www.zynga.com]

What else can you expect from a culture that celebrates "it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission"?

@jpdanzig:
Or any social networking whatsoever.

My list: Glee, Project Runway, Top Chef.

I must confess I have absolutely NO idea what this article is about, or who these scumbags are, or what their (dis)service was.

I am obviously not the poorer for it either...

@Etoiles: @macezilla: @dveight: I am now enlightened. Now...how the hell do I block the status updates that are Edith Wharton quotes (or anything of that nature)?

I mean we gave our users poker chips if they downloaded this zwinky toolbar which was like, I dont know, I downloaded it once and couldn't get rid of it. *laughs* We did anything possible just to just get revenues so that we could grow and be a real business…

What does this mean? How is downloading a toolbar and being unable to get rid of it generating revenue? Very confused. IF I got a toolbar I couldn't get rid of, i'd never go back to that company. This quote makes no sense.

@Smashville_now with Monster Energy: As Etoiles mentioned, you can hide the updates to those apps.

#1 Facebook Pet Peeve: Mafia Wars shoutouts or broadcasts or whatever they call them. I don't play...so I don't give a shit. Stop sending that shit to me.