A few people (well, two to be exact) have contacted me recently to complain about ads that have been appearing in my sidebar. One was a political ad and another looked like a phishing ad or something similar. I don’t want those kind of ads appearing on my site. I have the power to block specific ads if I know they’re out there, so don’t hesitate to report a questionable ad here. If two people have emailed me, I figure there must be more of you out there who noticed but didn’t say anything.

If this continues to be a problem, I will probably drop the offending ad network, but I need your help reporting these ads so I can figure out which network they’re on. Ad networks are designed so they can target ads only to people in certain geographic locations, so I will never see some of the ads you see. (Unless you’re my next-door neighbor, and if you are could you please not play the bagpipes after 8:00pm? So totally not joking.)

I don’t [...]

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Over the years I’ve started to get more and more press releases that include an offer to review INSERT YOUR STUPID PRODUCT HERE. Most of these get tossed in my trash bin. Sometimes I giggle or roll my eyes before I delete them, like I did all three (yes three!) times they sent me the press release for the arm flab girdle. At first it was fun to get these emails because if I was getting PR spam it meant someone was reading my blog, even if it was only a computer program harvesting email addresses on web pages that use the word “lard.” But I got over that thrill really quickly and now they’re mostly annoying. (Yeah, I know, poor, poor, me.)

Sometimes though, I get sent an offer to review a product that genuinely intrigues me. It could be for a product I’ve heard about or something I think my readers might enjoy. This has always caused an ethical pickle for me because I don’t want my blog to become one long infomercial, but [...]

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