A Note From the D Magazine I.T. Department

Here at D Mag HQ we’ve been hit with some spam of late. Our I.T. support engineer, Matt Shelley, issued a company-wide memorandum warning people to be careful about opening attachments from unfamiliar senders. As a public service, I pass along his note:

Dear technologically in-touch staff members,

It has come to my attention (and the attention of my tech legions — yes, I have those) that several of you are receiving spam email today from tiffany.com that includes an attachment. This attachment has the word “invoice” in its name. As you may have read two sentences ago, this is spam. And, in an effort to educate you and fill your bright, high-functioning tech brains with some useful information regarding email dangers and common sense, here are some good spam guidelines to keep in mind.

1. If you don’t know the person, do not open the attachment.

2. No legitimate business will ever send you an attachment, i.e. jewelry stores you can’t afford, shipping companies, banks.

3. There is not some unidentifiable source holding onto invoices for you out there in the whirlwind of debt accumulation that you do not know about.

4. Do not succumb to fear.

5. You are not significant, but you are considered useful.

6. Do not eat meat at the airport.

7. Stay alive.

So, with all the love I can fit in my back pocket, I come to you pleading for hope. Do not open attachments if you do not know the person. Did you give your email to tiffany.com? Do they work on a “bill you later” agreement with customers?

Anyway you peel the potato, I am sorry if this somewhat smug and genuinely scornful email hurts your feelings. Those tiny, cuddled, and seemingly confused feelings of yours are important to me. Lastly, if you would like to work on some awareness exercises pertaining to email and general grifting tomfoolery, send me a letter.

Dallas Cowboys Launch Gay Dating Site

Okay, the Cowboys aren’t really in the gay romance business. But Deadspin reports that Cowboys.com has launched as a — well, see for yourself. Once upon a time, the team actually won the URL at auction. But then team officials realized that they’d just bid $275,000 and not $275. They backed out of the deal.

Just for fun, I checked Bears.com. It’s also gay, but in a totally different way.

A Note About FrontBurner Traffic

In the comments to Leading Off this morning, a FrontBurnervian named M Schwartz said that there has been a “significant drop in traffic on FrontBurner” because of the way we moderate comments. FBvians who have been around a while know all about the Time of Darkness a few years back, when Wick shut off comments altogether because they weren’t much fun to read. Traffic did drop then. But the decision to moderate comments — and to do it with a fairly heavy hand, tossing remarks not only because they are vulgar but because, for instance, they don’t use upper-case letters to begin sentences — has proven to be a solid decision.

From August to October last year, FrontBurner averaged about 56,000 unique visitors per month. For the same period this year, we have averaged about 114,000 unique visitors. Now then, owing to the way Google Analytics does its job (and the way we do ours), the number from last year doesn’t account for visits made on a mobile device, which the 2011 number does. A tech genius here (Hi, Randy!) says adding 10,000 unique visitors to last year’s average would be a crazy high number. Let’s do it anyway.

Conservative estimate: traffic is up 70 percent over last year. Lesson to be learned: don’t confuse the number of comments to a post with the number of people who are reading it.

We’re humbled by your patronage.

(Not really.)