Beware of Being Scammed - 2 Attempts in 2 days

byLCowley1

473 followers

4 years ago

There is always a first

I had a first today, my first spam comment that was also a scam attempt.

I get so excited when I get an email from WordPress to advise me that I have a comment on my website that I need to moderate. And so far I have not had many of those, but they have all been good and I could reply and approve them.

So I was pretty ecxited to find an email today that there was a comment that needed moderation.

Well, this comment was littered with links to three other websites. The products that he was trying to promote, have got nothing to do with the post that he was commenting on. The spam comment itself didn't even refer to anything in my post.

There is also not even anything remotely of relevance or connection to anything on my website, so the three websites he was trying to link me to, was a complete scam.

Thankfully Kyle had covered that in one of the training modules, and I had already completed it, so immediately recognised all the signs of a spam comment. I guess this guy thought I might fall for it to be "backlinks", but no, this was definitely spam.

I guess I was more vigilant because I very recently wrote a blog on signs to recognise a scam. I was prompted to write that after a friend found that her Instagram profile was being used to con people into investing money with her. Of course it was a complete scam.

And then surprise, surprise

The second time in less than 24 hours, I receive an email.

I am contacted out of the blue by somebody who said he had found my website and knew that I was an affiliate marketer. He said he is an affiliate manager and was inviting me to join their high paying affiliate program. The subject title of the email was "A high Paying Offer for Liné" (he even got the accent acute on the e for my name, which is very unusual).

Of course I felt surprised, but also honoured to have been selected, so I asked for more details.

And he came back with the information to join Blake Nubar's Social Media Lead Machine Partner Program. There were two processes to go through.

The one was to create a free account, so I started on that. But I felt uncomfortable when my captcha code was not accepted. I tried a few times and then emailed the "affiliate manager" to advise him I couldn't proceed.

He came back with an email to delete cookies on my computer and gave me instructions that made me feel very uncomfortable, so I didn't do it.

The other part of the sign-up was to provide them with a photograph of myself and my full names to be put on as the co-host on a funnel. That is when alarm bells really started ringing for me. Why do they need my photograph? What are they doing putting me on as a co-host? Is this a SCAM?

I once again went back and asked the question as to why they need my photograph and please tell me more about the co-hosting. Needless to say, but I have not heard back.

Scam Alert!

So I went back to my own research when writing my blog on how to recognise a scam and one of the first warning signs is "were you contacted out of the blue", and yes this was certainly an unsolicited email.

I thought back on my feeling of being special that I have been selected, but that of course is what scammers are relying on.

So if anyone can tell me for sure that Blake Nubar's Social Media Lead Machine Partner Program is not a scam, I might (only might) pursue if further, but in the meantime I will put it into my scam folder.

With more people working from home and looking for ways to earn money online, it means that more scammers are on the prowl and targeting vulnerable and unsuspecting people. And that unfortunately means the elderly as well.

So we all need to stay vigilant and beware of the scammers, including signing us up as affiliates.