[info]ardath_rekha in [info]07refugees

LJ's latest outrage: Snap.com

Guys, you'd better check this out. LJ has found a new way to spam our accounts. Now, when people hover over a link on your journal -- say, for instance, your "I've moved to InsaneJournal!" link -- LJ is having Snap.com generate a pop-up image to suck up bandwidth and add spyware to people's computers and God knows what else.

I really wasn't looking forward to going through all of my inactive accounts to deactivate that crap, but now I'm going to have to. Any chance LJ ever had of wooing me back? Just got totally flushed. This is the most obnoxious thing yet!

Here's the discussion that alerted me.

Comments

It wasn't enabled in my viewing options.

One could think that a partnership like the one with snap.com is newsworthy, no?
It wasn't enabled in my viewing options.

Apparently, it's only enabled by default for new accounts.
best.icon.ever. XD
Failaroni, the SixApart "treat"!

Lawdy, could they get any worse?
Christ on a tapdancing pogo stick made of crackers.. It's like a fail limbo!
I just had to icon the fail limbo bit, but it's a bit... adult (though censored) so I'm going to be chicken and text link it. It's here.
That was a thing of beauty. :3
Free for the snagging for anyone with the proper amount of brazen to use it. :D
Great! Now I can start making a connection between 6A and them being the new Cybernetic Anti-Christ! xD Complete with spyware-adding faggotry.
It's like they WANT to be the black sheep of the internet...
It seems that the default is that snap is disabled. For once this is a feature you have to opt IN to not opt OUT of.

But what's the bet that the News community will have it enabled for all of those sponsored links that paid users aren't meant to see?
Apparently it's disabled for older accounts and enabled if you make a new one. lolaroni.
HAHAHAHA.

I'm lolling like mad. It's like a trainwreck that just keeps piling up and piling up coz they don't clear the tracks but they don't cancel the coming trains either. BRILLIANT.
I'm so tempted to go buy a printer cartridge and do printouts of all my LJ entries, then delete the whole thing.
I don't often hate, but I'm working up an extreme dislike for LJ that is right at that tipping point.
You can go to LJBook.com and convert your whole archive to a PDF, and then delete it if you want.
Thanks for the help! Doing that now.
There's also LJ-Archive (which I can't remember the website for, but googling would turn it up, and there are tutorials on various people's journals) that lets you transfer your LJ posts to another journal service.

It doesn't carry over comments or icons, and custom friendsgroups can get a bit weird, but it'll at least let you move the content over. (Dunno if you knew about that one.)
Well, I got three of my five years on LJ copied over -- note for future users, you can only have 2 attempts at converting your journal for free -- then they ask for a donation. That'll teach me for not reading the FAQ first.
If you want to save your comments to your hard drive, this post explains how. And it also mentions a utility for transferring posts (no comments or music/mood/location info, but better than nothing).
LJSEc is quite good for transferring over old entries from LJ to IJ or other site and as I think you've discovered LJArchive for downloading to your computer including comments and userpics.
While I'm quite unhappy with the Snap thing, just one thing: It's not going to download frigging spyware to your computer! Stop with the paranoia.

Again - yes, it cannot automatically download spyware onto your computer.
But the overall procedure to avoid tricks like this is turn off JavaScript / ActiveX in your web browser, especially when you visit Live Journal.
It makes sense to disable it as much as possible wherever you surf. A bunch of stealthy tricks cannot be executed if you have it disabled.

i was under the impression that this was only for sponsored accounts :/

(Anonymous)

Wow Guy/Girl, I know this post is old, and its odd to comment on it but, it doesn't and can't add spyware to your computer, thats just not how it works.

Yeah its annoying, but it can also be helpful, like when your trying to avoid being rick rolled or something.

And the bandwidth usage is at its worst, negligible.