I have not posted in about 31 weeks by now. Or read LJ much either -- lately, unless someone tells me so-and-so posted something I should see, I have not been reading LJ. I will start someday, and I look forward to it. (Just FYI, I read Facebook even less often than I read LJ, so don't hold your breath about that one either.)
So, given that I have not been even paying enough attention to my friends, imagine how cranky I was when I was friended by a couple of 'bots -- got LJ notification email, that's how I found out too. As far as I can tell, all they want to do is spam my friends page with their ads for flatter abs or diets or whatever. I don't want to see the ads anyway... and some folks suspect that what the 'bots really do is, once you friend them (by accident, one presumes, because if you look at their user info you find nothing and if you look at their posts it's only spam) they'll be able to read and store all your friends-locked posts to do who knows what with the info, maybe blackmail you. Oh, and before I forget, the 'bots go thru someone's friends list and friends a bunch of them, so it looks like you might know the person or your friends do. No love from me to those 'bots, no sir.
So, I turned into one of those cranky old folks brandishing his cane and shouting "damned kids, get off my lawn!" and reported the 'bots to LJ -- its easy, just write their names on the handy little box here
http://www.livejournal.com/abuse/bots.bml and LJ supposedly investigates and suspends/terminates the accounts... one of them is already dead today and I expect the other one to follow soon. I feel like we can't just ignore those or it will just get worse. And it's easy, so if you get a few of those, just report them too, please.
I figure if it's too much work to create those accounts to spam people those pesky folks that want to spam will give up instead of becoming the email spam problem we have because not enough people complained loud enough from the start. I can only dream.