Odd Request...Not Sure Where to Put This
But I got this email today:
You Should Blog About This Megan Santos Unsubscribe
Hi ,
I just came across an article on gentlemint.com and really enjoyed your post . It was really well written, and I think your advice is the kind of thing more people need to hear and follow. Kudos!
I am reaching out because I was wondering if you would write and post an article that contains 3 - 4 links that would be relevant to the article topic. The article would need to be around 500 words in length.
Please advise on the cost for this service and if you offer a bulk pricing package. Let me know if you’re interested.
Have a great Saturday,
Thanks,
Megan Santos Senior Manager Mystical Writing e: [email protected]
Anybody else? Almighty Founders, what say you?
Thank in advance,
Eric
9 replies
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Razorback
5 years, 3 months agoWhich post on Gentlemint was she referring to? And how did she get your email address?
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elancaster65
5 years, 3 months agoBoth questions have been asked. So far, no response. Biggest issue is, how did she get my email address? Was it via Gentlemint? Or just good snooping on her part? It's not secret what my email address is. Just curious this unsolicited request.
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brian
5 years, 3 months agoSorry, just saw this.
Huh, well that is interesting. I can assure you this person did not get your email address from us. We don't share any kind of information with anyone, ever.
We get a lot of requests like this to write about weird sites every week, but that makes sense because we have our email address at the bottom of every page.
My guess is that maybe it is just good snooping on her part, particularly because no one else has reported anything like this to us.
Regardless, can you forward the original email to [email protected] so we can take a look at it? I may have a couple of more questions about this as well, but I'll definitely look into it. I certainly do not want random people emailing anyone that uses this site even if the email address was a lucky guess on her part.
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elancaster65
5 years, 3 months agoOn its way.
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Chet_Manly
5 years, 3 months agoIt’s a traaaap!
My initial knee jerk reaction. I have seen replies like the one you received to comments on YouTube and I’ve wondered about their legitimacy. Please post as it develops.
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elancaster65
5 years, 3 months agoYes...the Admiral Akbar in me sensed the same thing.
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glen
5 years, 3 months agoEric, thanks for sending this our way. So, there are a couple of ways that your (and anyone else's email) could have been gotten by these spammy outfits:
Taking a username and adding @gmail.com, @hotmail.com, etc.
Using a service like this one to get the email addresses for social accounts on a various of other sites.
Basically, if you reuse the same username other places on YouTube, etc. (like most everyone) then they can piece this stuff together. You'll notice the "Hi ," salutation, without any name... it's essentially spray and pray.
I've done writing for various websites over the years, as well as signed up for nearly every social media platform under the same in the past 15 years. Because of it I get around 5 of these exact types of requests a day. Since Gentlemint isn't quite (yet!) the size of YouTube et. al., these aforementioned scraping sites don't know how to categorize it. To them, Gentlemint is a "blog", and any username they get from the site is an author of the "blog". Or maybe they just don't care and call everything a blog. Either way, it's weird.
Anyway, hope that answers some questions. Also: Spammers are the worst.
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elancaster65
5 years, 3 months agoThanks for the insight.
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jordan
5 years, 3 months agoCan you post a mystical 500 word article to the Parlor for us all to read anyways?
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