Spam bigger bother than ever

What was once mostly an email problem has now migrated to social media platforms, writes

those same hashtags.

What’s worse, social spam is often quite subtle. On LinkedIn, for example, every time I updated my profile I used to get the following message from loads of people: ‘‘Congrats on the new role! Hope you’re doing well.’’

At first glance it looks like a personal message from one of your contacts. But in fact, it’s a stock message that takes one click to send. Because it’s an automated prompt by LinkedIn, many people have got into the unfortunate habit of clicking it repeatedly.

Frankly, it’s a turn off. By that I mean it prompted me to turn off all notifications from LinkedIn.

What if this is just the beginning of the extended spam era?

One of the biggest trends right now is voice-controlled devices like the Amazon Echo and Google Home. Apple’s version, called HomePod, is coming in 2018. These devices are just a precursor to an even bigger trend: voice assistant software integrated directly into our household appliances. Samsung aims to introduce this technology as soon as next year, with its Bixby software.

So it’s just a matter of time before spammers infiltrate our homes. If nefarious programmers have worked out how to send automated, random phone calls to our smartphones, you can bet they will eventually get into our home appliances.

I’m already having nightmares about my refrigerator saying ‘‘hope you’re doing well’’ to me ad nauseam, like a broken record. Let’s hope Google is developing a spam filter for fridges.

Richard MacManus (@ricmac) founded tech blog ReadWriteWeb in 2003 and has since become an internationally recognised commentator on what’s next in technology and what it means for society.