I wrote recently about some odd email inquiries I had been receiving which were reaching a feverish pitch. And it was clear from the comments we received that I was not alone.
Thanks to alert reader Nancy (if that is really her name), the case has been cracked. In what has to be the best bit of gumshoe work I have been witness to in awhile, she sent me a couple of links which blew this case wide open.
It seems that the UK has been enjoying the same spammy Q & A which we have stateside; they explain it nicely here. The site they reference is in fact the site where our gal in the trench coat found my word-for-word response to one such spam query. The thing that really grates on me is that they republished my response in a manner which suggested that I was participating and commenting on their site.
What is wrong with people?
Apparently, they thought this was a rather slick way to get traction for their Google AdWords campaign, and from the looks of the site, they have been at it for awhile.
In their defense, one nasty-gram from me resulted in “all that user’s posts being deleted.” Only, I wasn’t a “user” now, was I?
Just to be sure, I dug up an old sucker-response I sent on July 25th:
Pasting my pearls of wisdom into the search bar, I got this:
True to their word, my words no longer appear on this page; Google is just late to get the memo. Curious, though, that they wasted no time. The original post appeared on the same day I hit the reply button.
The problem is that the site with all of the other unknowing users’ content still stands.
If you were one of the well-intended agents who got sucked into this scam, you might want to cut and paste one of your responses into the search bar. I’ll lay odds you will find your remarks at www.goftp.com.
