No – I am not referring to the myriad of people who send spoof e-mails that attempt to hack my personal details or the equally irritating marketing e-mails for items I would never want to purchase.  The pests to which I refer are Microsoft and LinkedIn.

Every time I boot up my laptop, Microsoft invite me to upgrade my software to Windows 10 and every time I decline.  The reason is simple.  When it was first launched, I opted to upgrade and waited patiently for the on-line miracle to complete.  All appeared well and the new version seemed to have some good features.  However, when I called up an important piece of MS software that I use daily, I was surprised and horrified to find that Windows 10 will  not run MS Money.  No warning; no advice; just a refusal to load it after I had upgraded.  Now Microsoft have long ceased to support their own product MS Money but that has not prevented me from relying on it hugely and using it daily to manage my finances.  So, faced with the total and instant loss of all my financial information, I pressed the button to roll back the Windows 10 upgrade.

So, Microsoft, please stop badgering me to upgrade; I can’t and I won’t until it will allow me to run MS Money.

My second cyber pest is LinkedIn.  Several times per week they e-mail me asking me to link with one or more people with whom I have e-mailed.  The e-mail appears to come from the individual, someone I know and they can be persistent and remind me of their request.  I have discovered in the past that these individuals who are apparently imploring me to join them in LinkedIn have no idea they are badgering me.  I strongly suspect that they allow LinkedIn access to their on-line address books and LinkedIn simply e-mail everyone they find in it to try to increase their membership base.  I think this is a damned cheek and an invasion not only of my privacy but also that of the individuals who unknowing allow LinkedIn to pester people.

I can see absolutely no benefit from joining LinkedIn and plenty of disadvantage with their aggressive marketing approach so I simply delete requests immediately.  In fact, when I get a minute, I ought to write an Outlook rule to send all LinkedIn e-mails directly to the Junk Mail folder.