If you own a website and have contact information available (who doesn’t, you do want people to engage with you right?) you have probably received emails like this. Generally spam traps get them, but sometimes a real human typed it up and send it out so they come through.

How to tell if this is a scam or simply spam mail? 

• First major flag to tell the email is a scam, is  if someone wants to provide services and they use a free email account (@aol, @gmail, @hotmail etc..) run away, fast. This was was using a free/random @aol.com account. (I didn’t know aol.com was still a thing :)).
• Second major flag is there is no phone number listed.
• Third major flag is there is no address listed. And by law, random solicited emails are required to have the business address listed, and an unsubscribe button available.

These are typical sent out (from scripted program ran on computer) to try to get you to reply by email, which one, lets them know there is a real person behind that email, in which they will engage and try to obtain more information to either use maliciously or sell to other companies for other services you do not need.

Better yet, just add these email addresses to your list of spam/block filter and you will already be ahead of the game.

alan.digitalsolution@aol.com |  all spam emails...

• alan.digitalsolution@aol.com
• roy.digitalusa@gmail.com
• john.digitalsolution@aol.com
• gary.digitalsolution@aol.com
• paul.digitalsolution@aol.com
• admin@digitallyaheadteam.com
• corinne@rankhow.com
• luke69457hal@gmail.com
• charlenebakari01@gmail.com
• info@shaxiams.top
• seekamp.hayden@gmail.com
• thomas@charlestondigitalfirm.com
• william@prodigital.live

We continue to get asked about these from our clients or others as they simply change the bogus email they use to send from.

 

This is considered unsolicited aggressive spam. Why is this considered Spam? Because its unsolicited (you didn’t ask for it) and is a fraudulently deceiving email, making you think there is all sorts of issues with your website.

So we want to provide this information to protect you, or at least make you aware to simply hit the delete key on this. Hoping you are finding this from searching, ultimately protecting yourself from this spam company.

The actual letter text:

FROM: Alan Walker <alan.digitalsolution@aol.com>

Dear business owner of <scripted this will be your domain name, which is public knowledge of course>,

You can’t expect your website to increase your revenue with so many errors. Many business owners get puzzled as their website isn’t performing well, while others’ are flourishing. That’s unfortunate, but not your fortune!

Now, I will show you the number of broken links, pages that returned 4XX status code upon request, images with no ALT text, pages with no meta description tag, not having a unique meta description, having a too long title, etc., found in your <scripted this will be your domain name, which is public knowledge of course>. Too many issues to worry about!

If this is something you are interested in, then allow me to send you a no obligation audit report.

Best Regards,
Alan Walker
Marketing Consultant

 

**ANOTHER EXAMPLE SPAM LETTER**

Hi <companyname>,
My name is Corinne ; I’m a search engine marketing specialist and wanted to reach out and understand if you need any professional help with your website.
Google trend analysis suggests sixty percent of online visitor’s pop out within few seconds if they don’t find anything persuasive. Chances are fairly high that they land on your competitor’s website, which is quite frustrating.
It’s easy to walk in to any website and suggest these are the errors or Issues. However what brings in to fix them, is what counts the most.
Every website is unique and hopefully the circumstances are also different when it comes to engaging it with marketing mix. My takeaways for such vulnerability goes as following:
Making website technically correct as per latest search standard by eliminating errors that block indexing.
Measuring all channels or platforms that contributes for competitor success, should be a scale for planning, though not limited to only influencing factors.
The best way to deal with potential issue of back links is to respect the context and content. Again to understand that more you need to read through your search console.
Finally implementing tools that measures campaign effectiveness is integral to any such promotion campaign.
Most people just don’t know where to start…
If you have any questions I would be happy to answer them for you. I can even show you what we have done to market our clients business. We use cutting edge marketing techniques and strategic outside of the box thinking to keep my clients light years ahead of their competitors.
Would you like to have a free consultation where I could tell you what I could do to improve your traffic from the search engines and how much it would cost?

 

**ANOTHER EXAMPLE SPAM LETTER**

Dear Business Owner of <yourdomain>.Com ,

How is it possible that your <yourdomain>.Com is having so many errors? Yes, most of the people share their anger and frustration once they get my email.

Now, I will show you the number of broken links, pages that returned 4XX status code upon request, images with no ALT text, pages with no meta description tag, not having an unique meta description, having too long title, etc., found in your <yourdomain>.Com.

I have a large professional team who can fix all the above issues immediately at an affordable price. I guarantee you will see a drastic change in your Google search ranking once these are fixed.

If this is something you are interested in, then allow me to send you a NO OBLIGATION AUDIT REPORT in the form of VIDEO. Best Regards,Roy SmithMarketing Consultant

 

 

I did some discovery work, and checked out the email address which listed some website (most list no other info) on the website and their public info on their domain (like they did yours).

Their website is a basic scam site, where some scammer created a website and started scraping the internet with already available listings and added it to their website, which is not seen from anywhere else.  Then they send scripted and scammy letters like these trying to collect money and obtain personal data from unsuspecting folks.

If you have any questions or have received other deceptive emails, let us know by contacting us. We will be happy to post them to give warning to consumers.

Let us know if you have been receiving these (or similar ones) in the comments below.