Geobloggers,
Anyone else ever get notes like this in their email?
Hello,
I was reading http://mountainbeltway.wordpress.com/2010/08/23/rocks-of-glacier-national-park/ and had a comment from the piece. The image of the Belt rocks of the Altyn and Appekunny formations was really helpful in understanding how the cliffs are formed. This piece had a lot of really interesting and indepth information of Glacier National Park.
Also, I’m interested in purchasing a text link on this post, that would go to an education site offering science programs.
I can pay $100 for the link via PayPal and give you a call or email back details if you are interested.
Thanks
[name redacted]
If you want to comment, leave a comment, right? Pretty prosaic comment, anyways… and “in depth” is two words, which is suggestive of spammer sloppiness. (Ditto for having a comment “from” the piece, rather than “on” the piece…) I haven’t written the person back. This strikes me as “almost certainly some sort of scam,” but I’m curious to hear whether anyone else has had any emails like this come their way.
I got one exactly like that (except that it referred to one of my posts). I was asking my colleagues at Wired about it and they all immediately yelled “SCAM!”.
I got an almost identical one claiming to need it for some not specified education website. Haha! Just with a link of my own blog. I didn’t bother to reply and deleted it.
I just had one this week on an old blog post – I figured it was a scam, but wrote back anyway saying “No”, just to see what would happen. No response yet, but I didn’t expect one. (If it’s a spambot, I have to admit it came up with a pretty sophisticated email…)
I got one too. “online site offering science programs”? That’s odd enough but who would spend $100 for a single link in an old post that is not likely to be visited very much in the future? Strange…
Totally spam. Don’t even reply, it’s not worth your time, and they’ll just keep trying to scam you.
Ditto!
When the first sentence doesn’t make sense, the rest won’t either.
I’ve had a couple, I’m guessing somebody in a foreign cybersweatshop with marginal English skills working from a script and inserting a few things to give the appearance of interest. You could have fun with a little scambaiting: http://www.419eater.com/
It is pretty inventive… just needs a better algorithm.
Almost identical to one I received recently, but with specifics relating to one of my blog posts.
I got. I marked it as “spam” and didn’t post it.
That just screams scam. It’s the exact same sort of thing I used to get as a comment, only Blogger got good at detecting them. I imagine that’s why they’ve resorted to sending them thru email.
Admiral Akbar says “It’s a Trap!” and now onto parody land.
Hello,
I was reading http://mountainbeltway.wordpress.com/2010/08/23/rocks-of-glacier-national-park/ and was wondering if you could tell me what kind of rocks are under my house. The easy part is there is a 20 foot cliff face you can look at with a paved driveway at the base. All you have to do is wire my Nigerian cousin some money and then drive out to Culpeper, Va for a nice day trip.
Ha! David, you’re on! I’ve been meaning to schedule a trip down to the quarry in Culpeper to shoot a gigapan, perhaps we could coordinate for one trip — maybe in early January? I’m pretty much booked ’til then. Shoot me an e-mail.