Tips on Avoiding Digital Scams
There are scams and too good to be true offers every day that you will receive. We highly encourage you to ask questions, think about if something is “too good to be true”, and make sure you kick the tires. The guys will give you several examples and ways to kick the tires of offers that want to give you 100s or 1000s of followers on social media, guarantee rankings in Google and Bing, and even go into some offline examples (decks, HVAC, roofing scams).
*Note: Just because someone that you don’t know emails you it doesn’t automatically mean that it is a scam but if it sounds too good to be true make sure you do ask lots of questions.
E14 Mentioned Tools & Resources
- Google Webmaster – Will often tell you if you have been hacked or have malware
- Sucuri – 3rd Party Site Scan
- Domaintools – check your domain registration
Scam Examples
While we all get many of these a day (and more for each additional domain/website you have) we thought we would highlight a few that came in just days before we pushed this episode live. It seems recently that much of the “offers” I (Dave) has received this week were around videos for my websites.
These are just two quick examples but others that we often see are for 99$ domain renewal emails, 100 links for $10, emails you get from random people about how they found your site (typically very vague and always some random Gmail account with design in the name) claiming top rankings in just days or some other cheap too good to be true offer. A fair number that I (Dave) personally get are through a contact form on one of my sites but the rest are email blasts.
During the show Mat made reference to an example and here it is! It is a great example of email offers for SEO and Social Media that you may want to avoid. You likely get emails very similar to this one and hopefully they are flagged as spam or just end up in your junkmail type folder.
Lastly here is another example recently received that was selling social followers and engagement for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and even SoundCloud.
If you have any examples or have seen any similar emails please drop describe it a bit in the comments so others can see additional examples.
From: X
Subject: Connecting with yourdomain.comMessage Body:
Hey thereMy name is X. It is my opinion that yourname.com is well thought out and it is obvious you are a leader in your market or will be one quickly.
I am connecting to you today to see if I can be of any service to you. For over 6 years I have in fact been helping organizations of every kind increase their followers and fans on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and SoundCloud. My business produces special methods for gaining authentic, active, and exceptionally targeted social followers or fans.
Our effective services will help you get traction on your various social accounts like your Instagram account, your Twitter account https://twitter.com/youraccount, your Facebook account https://www.facebook.com/youraccounty/, and your YouTube account.
To prove that I am for real, I want to send you 50-100 complimentary fans or followers to sample our services. To test drive our powerful social increasing campaigns please select 1 option from the list below and simply hit reply on this email with your choice and what URL we send them to. Feel free to click the links below as they lead to our website service pages to learn more.
- Real Instagram Followers -removed link-
- Real Twitter Followers -removed link-
- Real Facebook Likes -removed link-
- Real YouTube Subscribers -removed link-
- Real SoundCloud Followers -removed link-
To Request Your Free Trial Of Any Of The Above Services Please Go Here: -removed link-
After you fill out the form in 2-3 days you will see your selected account boom with activity. I am doing this due to the fact that we are confident that once you try us out you will become a long-lasting client. See the power of our system free of charge.
Thanks for your interest and if I have really upset you in any way by sending you this message through your contact page than kindly accept my apologies. This is a onetime e-mail only. It is my intend to get in touch with you and to develop a long-term business relationship!
Cheers to Your Success,
X
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