Obviously, in the spam business it is economical to to hire an office of typing slaves that surf around websites and try to send you spam where you don’t expect it. Your website contact form for example.
At least this seems to be the case with eBrandz, by their own description a “search engine optimization” company, that was contracted by another indian company whose name I’ll not disclose because it is, as I’m willing to believe, not aware of eBrandz’ questionable business practices.
- The first time, some danny.ebrandz@hotmail.com used my website’s contact form to tell me that he had placed a link to my website on his own site and that I should kindly link back to his site.
Dear Webmaster, My name is [name] and I just wanted to let you know that we have already placed a link to your site on the following webpage: [url of hidden page on advertising client’s site]. Your site details are As Follows: [target site description from google open directory]. Kindly link back to our site with the following details: [description of advertising client’s site].
The page containing the link to my website was there, but was in no way connected with the website structure of the client. Just a hidden area to make poor webmasters believe there was an actual outgoing link. I friendly replied to the sender’s hotmail account that I wasn’t interested. I got no reply.
- Some days later a bloke whose name I don’t know anymore because I deleted the mail repeated the exact same message, only the name was different. I visited the client’s website, looked up the marketing department’s email and repeated my friendly notice. I got no reply.
- Today, some zavier.ebrandz@hotmail.com pulled the same. Again. Oh, wait, now the message template had been changed:
My name is [name] and I have just gone through your site, and visited many pages. It would be better if we link to each other as reciprocal link place an important role in a search engine ranking algorithm.
I have already placed a link to your site on the following webpage: [url of hidden page on advertising client’s site]. Your link details are here: [target site description from google open directory]. I humbly request you to link back to us with the following details: [description of advertising client’s site].
I have to admit this is one step up from the usual buy 100 million email adresses and send undecipherable advertising mails to everyone practice. It’s almost like… hm… crime vs. organized crime. Do we have organized spammers now?
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