# Is this a scam? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 29, 2010, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-a-scam/534238 "2010-03-29T19:00:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Dahu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dahu/32/3416_2.png) [@Dahu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dahu)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2010, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-a-scam/534238/1 "2010-03-29T19:00:29Z")
I received this email earlier today: > [@](#): > > Dear Site Owner, > > Allow me to introduce myself. My name is xxx and I’m writing to you on behalf of my client who is a successful online gaming company. > > My client is offering a generous compensation package in exchange for advertising space on your website that I believe will be of interest to you. > > If you’d like to receive additional details, please let me know at your earliest convenience. > > I look forward to hearing from you. > Best regards, > xxx My site is just a personal one. Could this be legit, or the start of some kind of scam? If legit, how much income does this sort of thing bring in? ---
**Author:** ![palindromemordnilap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/db5fbb/32.png) [@palindromemordnilap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/palindromemordnilap)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2010, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-a-scam/534238/2 "2010-03-29T19:10:15Z")
Sounds like a scam to me. Generic, non-personal outreach? Check. The promise of big sacks of dough for doing nothing? Check. If the contact information is somewhat thin (such as, no phone number) and the name given can’t be found on Google as an agent of internet advertisers, I would look no further. I do know a fellow whose blog drew attention from advertisers, to the tune of a fewthousand dollars a year. But his site was about marketing and he was diligent about keeping content fresh and linking to other sites in the field. He had developed a pretty good following before the bux started rolling in. ---
**Author:** ![EmAnJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d2c977/32.png) [@EmAnJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EmAnJ)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2010, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-a-scam/534238/3 "2010-03-29T19:36:13Z")
Actually, I remember a thread about a month ago where someone received this exact email…let me see if I can find it for you. ---
**Author:** ![EmAnJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d2c977/32.png) [@EmAnJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EmAnJ)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2010, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-a-scam/534238/4 "2010-03-29T19:38:04Z")
[Here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=555603&highlight=email+advertising+website) it is. Not exactly the same, but similar. ---
**Author:** ![Apex\_Rogers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e480ec/32.png) [@Apex\_Rogers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apex_Rogers)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2010, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-a-scam/534238/5 "2010-03-30T00:46:36Z")
> [@Dahu](#): > > I received this email earlier today: > > My site is just a personal one. Could this be legit, or the start of some kind of scam? If legit, how much income does this sort of thing bring in? How much traffic does your site generate? Considering you’ve described your site as “just a personal one”, I’m going to assume it’s not that much, certainly not at the level of thousands of unique visitors each day. Even if this is a legitimate offer to sell advertisements on your website, you won’t be making very much money. I wouldn’t bother with this guy. If you’re interested in putting ads on your site, consider a proven commodity like Google or similar. ---
**Author:** ![Manduck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/manduck/32/256_2.png) [@Manduck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Manduck)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2010, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-a-scam/534238/6 "2010-03-30T01:46:36Z")
Also, xxx looks like a phony name to me. ---
**Author:** ![anson2995](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c77e96/32.png) [@anson2995](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/anson2995)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2010, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-a-scam/534238/7 "2010-03-30T01:55:55Z")
> [@Apex\_Rogers](#): > > I wouldn’t bother with this guy. If you’re interested in putting ads on your site, consider a proven commodity like Google or similar. I have a personal site that doesn’t get a ton of traffic, and frankly isn’t updated much. A gaming company offered me $50 a month to put a text link at the bottom of the page and I agreed. Google ads wouldn’t draw flies. These companies are trying to boost their google page rank. Not sure if it works, and I haven’t given too much deep though to how ethical it is, but I get $600 a year. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2010, 7:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-a-scam/534238/8 "2010-03-30T07:16:21Z")
From my experience of these things (that was me in the thread linked by **EmAnJ** , and that thread wasn’t the first time I’d received an email like this, just a slightly different case from the usual)… It’s not a scam, as far as I can tell, but they will want you to insert their ad link into your own text in the article, to make it look like you’re personally endorsing it, and to obfuscate its true nature as a paid link. I refuse to do that on my site for two main reasons: [ul] [li]I feel it breaches trust for my readers - if I link to something, I want them to be able to know it’s _relevant_, and that I personally recommend it.[/li][li]Concealing paid links is a violation of Google’s Webmaster policy - If you have Google ads on your site, this is especially pertinent.[/li][/ul] ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2010, 7:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-a-scam/534238/9 "2010-03-30T07:21:58Z")
One other thing… if you do decide to run with their scheme, try this: Ask them how much they would pay, and what they want Tell them you don’t really think it would be right for your website Wait for them to make a higher offer In at least a couple of the occasions I’ve been approached about this, they doubled their offer after my first refusal. (I still refused, but if you’re going to do it, you might as well squeeze some cash out of it) ---
**Author:** ![Askance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askance/32/8281_2.png) [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2010, 10:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-a-scam/534238/10 "2010-03-30T10:11:26Z")
My bet is that the ad is or contains links to a scam, they would just be using you as a carrier. Check out [this article](http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527532.400-infections-found-inside-the-great-scareware-scam.html?full=true) in New Scientist from just this week, starting from “Devious twist”: > [@](#): > > The company had, for instance, set up a series of advertising agencies that placed fake ads on websites. Code within these ads bombarded visitors with fake virus scans. > Zillow, an online estate agent, was one of the victims. In November 2007, an advertising agency called NetMediaGroup, which turned out to be a front for IM, got in touch saying it wanted to run a promotion for SkyAuction, a bona fide travel website, on Zillow’s site. The adverts appeared the following month - and the complaints came hot on their heels. When Chad Cohen of Zillow contacted the CEO of SkyAuction, he said he had never heard of NetMediaGroup. Some of the adverts had an extra devious twist, too: viewed from a computer within the website owner’s offices, the adverts appeared normal; only users elsewhere received the suspect scans. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2010, 12:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-a-scam/534238/11 "2010-03-30T12:32:54Z")
> [@Askance](#): > > My bet is that the ad is or contains links to a scam, they would just be using you as a carrier. The ones that have approached me haven’t been - they’re just trying to piggyback on the search engine ranking of a popular page, either trying to get direct footfall to their site (though the links), or just trying to game the Google PageRank thing by creating inbound links from popular pages. That’s not to say there aren’t scammers out there - and if the follow-through for something like this was a request to implement the ad in any way that could embed (or dynamically call) external code/content, it should be treated with extreme suspicion. ---
**Author:** ![BlahEtcWhatever](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a183cd/32.png) [@BlahEtcWhatever](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlahEtcWhatever)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2010, 9:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-a-scam/534238/12 "2010-04-07T09:05:08Z")
Yes it is a scam - I got the same email. In addition to it having no real detail it also appeared to be sent from a Hotmail address but it was actually sent from a different completely google account. Give it a wide berth. ---
**Author:** ![Dahu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dahu/32/3416_2.png) [@Dahu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dahu)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2010, 11:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-a-scam/534238/13 "2010-04-07T11:23:22Z")
I did send then a tentative reply, and this was their next email: > [@](#): > > Good to hear from you. Thank you for your time and response. > > As a reminder, my initial email was a proposal for an advertising partnership with my client, an internationally known gambling website operator. My client is expanding their online presence and they are interested in your participation in those efforts. > > To that end, my client is requesting to purchase advertising space on your website. The specifics of the advertising space are as follows: one short “text block” of information, to be placed on 3 different sub-pages of your website, that is 4 to 5 sentences in length and includes 2 to 6 links. > > In exchange for the advertising space, my client is offering $120 USD per year. This compensation is to be paid by either Paypal or Neteller to your account within 3 days of finalizing an agreement. > > Please let me know if you own or operate any additional websites that have similar content. If so, we would like to review those sites to determine if they fit our criteria. We are prepared to make a similar offer on a “links per portal” basis as compensation for any additional websites that we approve for advertising. > > Thank you for your time and consideration. We look forward to hearing from you. So it looks to me like it might be an attempt to improve someones google ranking, but I don’t really see how I could end up being the loser here. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2010, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-a-scam/534238/14 "2010-04-07T20:46:40Z")
> [@BlahEtcWhatever](#): > > Yes it is a scam - I got the same email. > > In addition to it having no real detail it also appeared to be sent from a Hotmail address but it was actually sent from a different completely google account. Both of these facts mark it as _spam_, but not necessarily as a scam - and as I and others have found and noted above - it’s probably a legitimate offer - it just happens to be one that could be detrimental to your website if you are using Google ads or webmaster stuff. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2010, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-a-scam/534238/15 "2010-04-07T20:52:19Z")
> [@Dahu](#): > > So it looks to me like it might be an attempt to improve someones google ranking, but I don’t really see how I could end up being the loser here. It depends on the nature of your site. You will be asked to place the text right in the middle of your own writing, so it looks like you’re personally recommending the link - which in my own case, I felt would be a complete betrayal of trust to my visitors - but whether the same is true for you may depend on the nature of your own site (online gambling links just don’t fit in mine at all), and how strongly you feel about inserting stuff like this. And if you use Google products in your site, then being a party to this could cause you a problem. Otherwise, there’s little to lose - if you go for it, insist on an ordinary HTML link (no embedded stuff, no Javascript), insist on immediate payment, don’t be duped into paying anything, or giving out any sensitive account or personal information, and see what happens.