PG received the following text message this morning (punctuation and spacing as in the original):
– Hey . We believe you have it to be among the best authors of this era
The text came from a phone number PG didn’t recognize and included a link he did not click.
It will come as no surprise that, should anyone ask PG whether she/he/they/should click on this link to get their writing career off to a great start or for any other purpose, PG would advise against doing so.
While he’s sharing warnings, PG has recently seen more than a few really terrible/strange publishing contracts coming from overseas “publishers” which have somehow connected with US or British authors. These contracts don’t arrive via text message and include no strange links to click, but one might not be surprised to find that, as with random tweets, such contracts are also a bad idea to engage with.
Regarding security, the most memorable warning I got in the Air Force was “Two can keep a secret if one of them is dead.”
I worked in computer security for 7 years, and by the end of that time the (fairly simple) advice I gave everyone was “Don’t click on anything.”