<RANT>
I get the following email:

Hi there! Sorry for an e-mail out of the blue, but I just did a search for the term decimus maximus on Google and found 420th.com ranked 25. Since I publish a related website about Health - Men (it's strictly informational, so I'm definitely NOT a competitor of yours), I'd like to link to your site.

My site is one of the best resources for info in our category (I think you'll see that my site is pretty clean and high quality, and I only request to link to other quality sites for exchange). Because of this great info, I get a pretty decent amount of visitors...so if I link to you, your site should get some nice traffic as well.

So you know, I've already linked to you and will keep it there for a few days until I hear from you. If you're interested in swapping links for good, please reply back so I can get you all of the pertinent information.

Thanks!

Carrie Soefel
RAC IM: 1174473.


So i write back
saying that she can link me
[I obviously dont have any problems getting free traffic ;)

Then i get this back:

Thanks for your reply!

Like I said in my first message, I've already linked to you. I'm one of the editors for a search engine directory called High Index. It's an index of hand reviewed websites online...and since I appreciate your content, I've added you as a Featured Listing in this category:

http://www.highindex.com/Arts/Movies/Titles/G/

If you like, click on the link to check out your listing.

In exchange, please link to the site i wrote. Don't link to the High Index page above! (it won't be the most meaningful experience for our user) Rather, I'd like it you linked to the site I wrote: penisenhancementinfo.com

I want to make this step as simple as possible, so here is the code to place on your site:
<a href="http://www.p*nisenhancementinfo.com/Maximus.html">Maximus</a>

I'll leave you as a Featured Listing for a few days until i hear from you. If I don't hear back, I'll assume you're not interested and take the link down. Thanks for your time and anticipated cooperation!



Soefel




I got rather annoyed at this..
[My site has nothing to do with that..]
So i sent this back:

Ok, first of all you linked to the server status of someone elses server,
not my site.
my site is www.420th.com
LINK TO THAT!
Second of all...
What the hell were you thinking?
p*nis enhancement ?
My site has nothing to do with that.
I hate you guys.
Always spamming everyone with that crap.
Dont you understand..
If we wanted it.. we would find you.
Stop spamming me and the millions of others of people who dont want to see
this crap.




Seriously.. i cant take it when they send me that email.
It looks so bad, especially when people are around you.

I dont understand how she picked me..
my site is a clan for a game.
Nothing to do with her "line" of business

</RANT>

You've probably been talking with an advanced bot. It's crawled the web, found a page on your domain (the server stats), looked up the owner, done a related pages search on google (or something similar) to get some keywords, emailed you and added your link to that site when you replied.

Originally posted by phision.com
You've probably been talking with an advanced bot.


:rofl:

Why do ppl still respond to spam? If ppl didn't order / respond / visit sites, we would be spam free ;)

Lol... I bet you that now that you replied, they've also added your email addy to the to spam list...

Originally posted by LessHost
:rofl:

Why do ppl still respond to spam? If ppl didn't order / respond / visit sites, we would be spam free ;)

Some people never learn! :roll2:

It didnt seem like spam generated by a bot.
It seemed like someone actually wrote it [one by one]
If it was genuine computer generated spam, i would have received a million of those already.

i got the same (well almost the same) email, and i also have a gaming site


Hi there! Sorry for an e-mail out of the blue, but I just did a search for the term glutus maximus on Google and found creepcolony.com ranked 27. Since I publish a related website about Health - Men (it's strictly informational, so I'm definitely NOT a competitor of yours), I'd like to link to your site.

My site is one of the best resources for info in our category (I think you'll see that my site is pretty clean and high quality, and I only request to link to other quality sites for exchange). Because of this great info, I get a pretty decent amount of visitors...so if I link to you, your site should get some nice traffic as well.

So you know, I've already linked to you and will keep it there for a few days until I hear from you. If you're interested in swapping links for good, please reply back so I can get you all of the pertinent information.

Thanks!

Dora Casso
RAC IM: 1174679.

You aren't alone. Today I got an e-mail just like this. Before responding to it I tried to go to the site that the e-mail from address was from which results in a DNS error. Next I did a Google search on "RAC IM", which found this thread. Does anyone know what "RAC IM" is? Is it like ICQ?

Hi! I was just doing some research online, and came across your site while searching in Google! for box file game x x. Your domain, ra2faq.gamerzvilleuk.co.uk ranked 7...which got me thinking...

I publish a site about Home and Garden - Moving. We've got a very strong following, primarily because we only produce informational content, since you also produce a quality site in this category, I'd like to link to you. I get a pretty good amount of visitors to my property, so if I link up to your site you should benefit from a traffic standpoint.

Please take a look at my site when you get a chance -- I think you'll find it to be knowledgeable and tasteful. If you like what you agree, please link to it -- I'll send you all of my info on your request.

I've already linked to you to get the ball rolling. I'll keep it up a few days until I hear back from you, so please respond at your earliest convenience. Thanks for your time.


Cindy Walkers
RAC IM: 1189825.

Originally posted by ilyash
It didnt seem like spam generated by a bot.
It seemed like someone actually wrote it [one by one]
If it was genuine computer generated spam, i would have received a million of those already. If it was not "computer generated," wouldn't she have visited your site and known that it wasn't a "related website about Health - Men?" That's the clue that it wasn't a personal email.

There's plenty of linkbuilding software that people use to produce this kind of stuff.

true, but i dont think she really cares what the site is about.. its just that they want traffic, and they dont care where it comes from.

I am extremely spam aware, and am running a bayesian filter. I got this message, and it got through my spam filter with only a 3% rating. At first glance it looks like spam, but I wasn't sure so I read through it. It had a lot of stuff specific to my site, and it talked about linking me to a "home and garden" site which seemed reasonable, so I was close to being fooled. But it asked me to look at her site, and there was no link in the message. So I picked a few words out of the message and searched, and found this forum. Ha! Almost got me. Really nicely done, I'm sure it gets a lot of people.

I have the legal department dispatch a letter for unsolicited mail :D

Wow- I just "deleted as spam", which informs my spam filter that it's spam and it should adjust it's word list appropriately. Since there are a lot of words in there that are commonly in my email (since it was after all taken from my site), it still only gets an 83% spam rating. Usually when I label something as spam it immediatly gets labeled as 100% spam.

You could always block ISP's, IP's and other such information. I haven't recieved spam emails for awhile and those that I do come very few, very rarely.

goatrider, sounds like you're using NIS 2004, am I right?

SpamBayes. And 82% is enough to block it, so there's no point getting drastic and blocking domains. But it does seem like a nice loophold in bayesian filtering, if you're sending spam to someone with a site- just grab a bunch of words from the site and include it in the spam. It'll get through.

Thanks guys, just got one of these was a bit suspicious and dug around a bit, ended up here and had mysuspicions confirmed.