Over the past few months, you may have been inundated with a slew of unwanted emails from an “Eric Jones.” These emails start by complimenting you on how well your website does in terms of Google rankings (even if it doesn’t) and how wonderful the content is (even if it sucks). Then the hand wringing begins.
According to “Eric,” simply getting visitors to your website is not enough. Unless you can interact with them, all will be lost. But that’s okay.
Our buddy “Eric” has a deal for you that’s just too good to pass up. And, if you like what he’s selling, he also has some waterfront property in the Everglades he knows you will love.
It’s all a lie
There is of course no “Eric Jones.” There may, however, be a Rashid, a Li Zhang or a Vladamir behind each email. But they know you are more likely to respond to a nice, ultra-WASPish name like Eric.
Hell, when he’s not not trying to “help” people like you, this guy’s probably teaching Sunday school at the local Methodist church…right? That’s Lie Number One.
Lie Number Two is when he compliments you on how well your website ranks on Google. Seriously, with tens of thousands of these emails going out every day, do you really think a single individual took the time to check the Google rankings of each website involved? Utter bullshit.
Downright evil
What “Eric” is selling is the services of a company called Talk With Web Visitor. It’s ostensibly designed to capture visitors’ names, email addresses and phone numbers. It’s an actual company with an actual website. But before you jump on this incredible offer, Google Talk With Web Visitor scam. What you will discover is that they are not just dishonest, they are downright evil.
The most pernicious form of spam
What makes this type of spam particularly pernicious is that it doesn’t come directly to your normal email address. If it did, a good set of spam filters would most likely catch it.
No, this particular type of spam comes via your website’s email contact form. Hence it is known as form mail spam.
Hiding from the “‘bots”
Hopefully, you know better than to put your actual email address anywhere on your website. If you do, it will be snatched up by automated software that crawls the web looking for unsecured email addresses and other personal information. This type of software is known as a ‘bot (as in robot).
Once the ‘bot snatches your email address, it will be added to a list of similar stolen addresses that are regularly sold on the Dark Web. Mind you, simply keeping your email address off your website won’t stop people from getting it.
As one example, in the dive industry, the various diver-training organizations put their member stores’ email addresses on their websites. Here they can be easily snatched by any ‘bot that happens along. This happens in other industries as well.
Still, so long as you protect your email address as much as possible, it will help cut down on the volume of “regular” spam. This is why we put email contact forms on all our clients’ websites. It helps to mask their actual email address.
“Thanks, Google…”
While having an email contact form on your website makes it harder for spammers to mine your email address, it does not by itself stop spam. Just as there are ‘bots that mine email addresses, there are ‘bots that find unprotected contact forms, fill them out automatically and send you unwanted messages.
This, too, is preventable. We protect our clients’ email forms with Google’s reCAPTCHA. Early versions of reCAPTCHA forced visitors to check an I’m Not a Robot box or meet some other challenge. The latest version works entirely in the background.
While reCAPTCHA stops automated form mail spam, there is one thing it can’t stop. That’s if your contact form is filled out by an actual human being.
There are spammers in Asia who pay a small army of locals a few pennies apiece to find email contact forms, paste in a prewritten message, then hit Send. You see this on occasion.
What limits their ability to send even more massive amounts of spam is budget. Even though they pay their workers peanuts to spam you, they can only do this so often before running out of money.
So how does “Eric” manage to send such massive amounts of form mail spam? It’s because Talk With Web Visitor (TWWV) appears to have figured out something new.
The Internet’s dark underbelly
Have you heard of the Dark Web? You can’t access it with Chrome or Firefox. You need special software. Once there, you can find almost anything you want. Drugs, weapons, child porn, you name it. The Dark Web is a place hackers and spammers love to hang out.
Although no one knows with certainty exactly how TWWV does it, it’s been theorized they put out a notice on the Dark Web recruiting freelance spammers. Their offer is that, if you sign up with them, they will give you prewritten text to paste into any email contact forms you find. That text will contain a special code identifying you. Should you get an unwitting company to bite, you get a commission on whatever they spend.
The beauty of this is that TWWV doesn’t have to pay a dime until somebody pays them. We wouldn’t be surprised if TWWV also stiffs their freelance spammers.
This explains why you get multiple form mail messages from “Eric.” They are not coming from a single individual but from several, all hoping to make a buck.
So, how do you stop “Eric?”
You can’t. That doesn’t mean you have to be constantly annoyed by him and his brethren.
Gmail and similar programs allow you to create filters that will intercept messages from “Eric” and anyone else you specify and send them straight to Hell. You will never even see them.
If your current email client does not allow you to do this, consider switching to Gmail. You can configure Gmail so that it not only collects mail from your “official” email address (yourname@yourcompanyname.com), when you reply that message appears to also come from the same address.
Using Gmail has other benefits as well.
- Gmail has what may be the world’s most powerful spam filters.
- If you have ever had a recipient’s ISP block messages from your mailserver, you’ll find that is far less likely to happen with Gmail. Pretty much no one blocks messages that come through Google’s servers.
- You are unlikely to ever lose email stored on Google’s server to a local server crash.
- Gmail integrates seamlessly with a whole host of other Google applications.
Always be on guard
Hopefully, you know never to click on a link contained in an email from someone you don’t know. That’s just asking for identity theft, fraud and more.
Unfortunately, there will always be an “Eric Jones” out there. And there will always be ways to stop them. You just have to be paying attention and use your head.