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Land By The Hour

A brief comment this early morn in case someone can clarify this.

Yesterday evening I logged in through Emerald and saw that the MOTD (message of the day) read something about renting land by the hour. HMMM, I thought.  There are actually a few good reasons why you want might to rent some land by the hour -- meetings, a big build project that would be a more pleasant experience not on the sandbox. A quick "tryst"?

Still, it seemed a very odd thing for The Labs to be advertising. I clicked on the the little-bitty-URL link that always follows their messages these days and found myself at a website advertising -- land by the hour. The website did have a "join SL now" button on the side, but it had no official look at all. In fact it reminded me greatly of some very old web design. The background color didn't match the transparent text. You get the idea.

Yes, I did bookmark the site, but I decided that posting the link would be risky. My machine seems fine and I do have virus protection on auto update, but you never know. I can't imagine that this was an actual message from the powers that be. So was it a hack? An interesting thought.

I think that personally, I'll stop clicking on those tiny url links. One never knows where they might be going and I am (normally) a very careful gal.

Just something to think about.

Comments

EE said…
Chic,

More and more there are problems with the "shortened" URLs like you clicked on.

Be careful. Set your browser to "privacy mode" if you are unsure (it's just another precaution).

Best choice, of course, is don't click if it sounds "too good to be true, too odd and just plain useless."

I would recommend you delete the bookmark too.

EE
Isara Beaumont said…
I googled for it, and the top result of the search looked very much like you described it. Bad design, but looks rather harmless - the only active content on the page is a script to write the current date.

I suppose you can advertise via the MOTD, and this is just a poorly designed commercial site that does so.
Brandy Rasmuson said…
I can't speak about that particular website because I didn't notice it in the message of the day, but it probably was legitimate because that space is being sold for advertising now on a trial basis.
Caroline Apollo said…
It did say Advertisement: and then the message. I'm guessing you can buy the motd now.
Chic said…
Thanks everyone. Chic here. I didn't notice the "advertisement" text but I am using Emerald and it might not pick that up -- or I just didn't see it. Good to know it was most likely OK. Appreciate the input.

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