The Takealot Mother's Day what-what scam

I was not going to say anything but the burden has been so heavy on my heart since last week that I cannot be silent any longer. Two Sundays ago, I had an influx of messages from several of my Whatsapp contacts inviting me to click on a very shady looking web link. I did not cooperate in that regard but I am told this link which went viral, was exactly what I warned it was - a scam! Please may my beloved friends who entertained the scam, help me to understand a few things 😊

I come in peace when I ask, "where did you all get truck loads of guts to click on a link as dodgy (shady doesn't quite cut it)  as www.wp20.ru ? I need some of that bravado! 🤔😀

On second thoughts, you do not have to answer that one. Let's settle it by saying that it's me who is not brave or adventurous enough! However, do help me to understand this other question.

 Once you had clicked on that heinous link (more suitable adjectival descriptions now come to mind), and you saw that takealot.com was said to be running a promotion, did you not remember that the company is named by its URL, takealot.com ?! Shouldn't this have automatically alerted you that if the web page that you were on was not takealot.com then you were not on Takealot but on a fake page and therefore on dangerous territory? 😳

Well that question above might also be difficult to answer, so let's leave it as well. Let me ask something less complicated. Have you ever heard of a big and reputable company running a marketing campaign that is not found on their official website and is not found on radio or television, but only exists on forwarded Whatsapp messages? Is it logical that they would need one to forward a link to several contacts as a condition to qualify for a gift? Next time, mark that as an obvious red flag that someone wants your cellphone number and the numbers of your contacts for the purpose of selling that information to marketing people or else for hacking and/or pishing purposes! 

Fine, let me drop those complicated questions too. Here are two simple ones. Do you know that there is no such thing as a "free lunch," and that such offers of "free" gifts must be avoided? If you do not know,  you may read my other post on Facebook on this same issue. 

Ah well it seems there is going to be a challenge in getting the most basic responses, so let's scrap the whole idea of questions. I will just leave you with a tip: If another message is sent with a similar looking URL, or claiming that you stand to win freebies, walk away. Actually, don't walk but run! Run for dear life as fast as your legs can carry you!

Blackberry saga reminds us that we are not robots

The Blackberry internet outage came and is now history. The silly jokes at the expense of the hapless Blackberry users have circulated at viral speed worldwide and they have also subsided. People's blood pressures have sky rocketed and normalised again. At the end of it all, one stark question still stands glaringly, awaiting an answer. How were we able to survive before our smartphones, tablets and notebooks?

One is reminded through this Blackberry Saga, of the panic attack that was triggerd by the fear of known as the Y2K millenium bug. It gripped humanity on the eve of the 1st of January 2000. All awaited with bated breath, hoping against all hope that the ushering in of a new century would not lead to a global crash of computer systems. This week's Blackberry debacle has proved once again that man is now a slave of technology. Who can bravely stand up and claim that he is master of technology and is not at its absolute mercy? No siree, few can honestly make such a proclamation. What we need to do now and again is take breaks from Skype, Gtalk, Twitter, Blackberry Messenger, Facebook, Whatsapp and the host of other applications that we use to get in touch. Let us make a deliberate effort to communicate via a good, old fashioned sms or to make a normal telephone call. Let us park our cars and walk to the shops and let us handwash our laundry now and then. Switch off your computers and TV sets once in a while. Why do all of this?

The reason is simple: to remind ourselves that life is not a Science fiction flick in which we rely on some gadget, program or application to live. We need to remind ourselves that we invented this technology, it did not invent us. We are not robots, we are human! If Hagar the horrible, Tarzan, Asterix and Fred Flintstone could survive in the olden days with the most primitive and bare necessities, there is no logical reason why we cannot. Think about it, should we not go back to the basics?