Beware of Email Spam

Well after finally dusting off the old cob webs that is my website I kept coming across a recurring inconvenience.

I am sure others have experienced the same inconvenience and that is email spam sent from your own websites contact form.

For the most part most spam email campaigns will raise some red flags that can help you identify them as such. Let's take a look at what an obvious email spam looks like below.

I have redacted some sensitive information for my own security purposes. Some other information has been censored because this is purely for educational purposes not for promotional reasons.

I have highlighted two items that serve as good indicators for spotting spam. The title was highlighted because it is not relevant to my website at all. Are we offering? Offering what? There was no context to the title or subject that made grammatically sense.

Second item I highlighted is the email that was given within the contact form. My first impression was this email looks like it was made for a bot. Most emails are customized to make sense for professional reasons or to align with an individual's personal preference. Regardless of which there is a direct intention to naming an email a specific way.

This email however is modeled to look like a legitimate company email. Upon closer inspection one can notice the random numbers in the beginning 01 and the numbers 14624 in the middle. Why would any company email create an email that looks this? It is because this is not a legitimate company or service. It is spam trying to be deceptive.

Personally I steer clear from obvious spam such as this from the start, delete it and move on. This is based on the two indicators of title and where the email originated from. No further action needed.

Next we will look at what a more sophisticated email spam campaign looks like.

Could this be a legitimate inquiry or is it more spam? Let me be honest I was drawn in by the title "regarding your website feedback". This was because I have left feedback on some websites but that has only been strictly within Wealthy Affiliate's Site Feedback section.

First off the title and email it came from checked out as both seemed like it came from a real person with an inquiry. Upon reading the email I immediately got skeptical. Why would someone who needs help on their website or wants feedback ask through a contact form on wordpress instead of Wealthy Affiliate?

Well sure enough with some research done on the website highlighted through Whois.net we find that this website is legitimately registered. So what does this mean?

It could mean that this spam email was sent as an attempt to get clicks on the website in order to try to rank higher within search engines. Getting clicks through this method of course is shady and unsustainable.

A humble little website

http://www.gpwa.org/forum/casino-gorilla-spam-248258.html (unsecured website just letting you know)

helped to inform me that I was not alone in this email spam campaign. Apparently it has recently been ongoing and the spammer even goes as far as to switch IPs and cloak the email by attempting to use different names.

Of course the IP from where this email was sent from was reported. I usually ignore most spammers and do not report IPs because shady businesses are unsustainable and will come and go on their own. Unfortunate as it is but some people prefer to put maximum effort into taking the easy way out.

This particular spam email campaign I could not let go unnoticed as it is a little more sophisticated than your average spam campaign.

If other more technologically scrupulous characters follow suit than you can undoubtedly expect their websites and links to be liable to malware.

I am not trying to scare anyone just wanted to put it out there so everyone knows to be caution with emails now more than ever. Cyber security has become an integral part of the internet.

When it comes to emails you are the forefront defense for your website. On top of that time is valuable for any business. Spending time on verifying email spam is a inconvience.

If anyone else has experienced something similar to what I have I hope this helps.

Undoubtedly there are other measures you can take to ensure that email spammers spam in vain. That's it folks.

Be wary and be well all.