I Hate Getting Spam and Being a Hubber Target

1. 68

   Jerilee Weiposted 15 years ago

   Guess there is not much you can do about this other than reporting it as spam to your server?
   
   Soniya (via HubPages) to me
   show details 1:53 AM (7 hours ago) Reply
   
   
   Soniya (affiliate@xxxxxx) has sent you this message.
   (email address not verified)
   
   
   Hi Jerilee,
   My name is Soniya and I am the affiliate manager forxxxxxx
   I was recently reviewing my top keywords in some of the major search engines and I came across your top ranking Hub Page:
   http://hubpages.com/hub/Introduction-to … -or-Ti-fer
   After reviewing your Hub, I found that we are both targeting the same demographic, though we are not in competition with each other.
   I have been studying this target market for quite some time and would like to present you with the opportunity to leverage your existing traffic and increase your income using our affiliate program. xxxxxx
   By working together, we have the potential to create an additional revenue source for both of us --
   without investing any money or even any time. Because we share the same target market, your customers are guaranteed to be interested in my product. An affiliate arrangement is a surefire way to make that interest work to our mutual benefit.
   I offer this partnership very selectively, so I would like to discuss it further before I can make any commitments. If you are interested in exploring this opportunity, please reply to this e-mail so we can arrange a time to discuss this further!
   I look forward to your response.
   Sincerely,
   Soniya
   xxxxx

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2. 61

   countrywomenposted 15 years ago

   Even SweetiePie received spam from Hubpages recently. I guess there has to be a way to avoid this sort of spam. Have you tried to forward the email(team@hubpages.com)  to look into it.

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3. 0

   shinujohn2008posted 15 years ago

   You are giving more publicity by putting the link to that scam site here.
   
   Kindly Remove the website url.

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4. 68

   Jerilee Weiposted 15 years ago

   Good points.  How do I remove it?

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5. 68

   Jerilee Weiposted 15 years ago

   Duh!  I figured out to remove the links, guess I was having a senior moment on that one.

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6. 87

   Elena.posted 15 years ago

   Hi Jerilee -- I received the very same email from the very same address... didn't have a clue what it was about, but sounded pretty much like spam, so I just sent it to the spam folder and was done with it.  I guess there's not much one can do "against" getting that type of email but flag it.

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7. 68

   Jerilee Weiposted 15 years ago

   I now understand the proper approach is to report it to the team at Hubpages and just ignore it.

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8. 65

   Mishaposted 15 years ago

   It is not a spam, it is a serious business proposal

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   1. 77

      Lissieposted 15 years agoin reply to this

      
      
      I totally agree Misha.  The letter is well written and I assume the affiliate produce mentioned in it had some connection to Cajun, music or similar.
      
      The person wants you to sell their product - you add a link or similar to the hub which will include you affiliate ID - if some one buys the product you get a % - exactly the same as eBay or Amazon. You have the audience - they found you because your hub ranked well in Google for the same search term as you are targetting so they do know that you can bring interested customers to them. 
      
      Now you may or may not be able to participate in their proposition because of the limitations of the Hubpages TOS - but if I was you I would be immediately setting up another site foccussed on the same topic to see if I could repeat the exercise!

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9. 87

   Elena.posted 15 years ago

   Is it now, Misha? Guess that proves I'm doubly ignorant!  Laugh!

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10. 79

    SweetiePieposted 15 years ago

    The email I received the other day was an insurance scam and I just emailed team@hubpages.com about it and they replied with a thanks.  I think this is the best way to take care of these situations.

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    1. 82

       Whitney05posted 15 years agoin reply to this

       I think I got that one, too. I've had a few different ones recently. I just delete them. Didn't think about emailing the team about it. I'll have to do this next time.
       
       My favorite was something like 'Hi I'm so-and-so. I live in Africa (or something). Here's my email and phone number. Will you be my friend.'
       
       It was from HubPages or at least had HubPages in the subject line.

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       1. 79

          SweetiePieposted 15 years agoin reply to this

          I got that one too.  Also, I got several emails with people asking me to be their pen pals and send money to their addresses.  I guess they thought my hub about how to find a pen pal meant I was a sucker for their ploys .

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11. 82

    Whitney05posted 15 years ago

    I got a new one yesterday. It was sent as a reply to an email I'd supposidly sent and had hubpages in the title too somewhere with a subject of something like 'hubpages RE: leopard gecko' it was sent from a personal account on like hotmail or something.
    
    The guy told me he has friends who have diplomas and had "bin" to the pet store and i'm cruel and an idiot. I just replied with i'm not sure what you're talking about and made a comment about his friends with diplomas not necessarily knowing anything about reptiles. Gave him my years of experience. He replied calling me a "stupid AMERICAN" and a bunch of other crap acussing me of improperly caring for my reptiles.
    
    I thought it was pretty. Funny. He added that I'm 30 and he's 45 so he didn't need to grow up... Dude I'm 21 and whoop-di-doo he's 45 doesn't mean he's acting like an adult.
    
    
    Anyone know where all the spam came from lately? I've never hada problem with it before...

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12. 68

    Jerilee Weiposted 15 years ago

    I wasn't having any problems with this until lately either.  Yesterday and today, I got some vile hate mail, over the hub I did that had to do with abortion.  They were totally off the wall of rationality and of course it was from one non-hubber, although they switched identities.  I guess it comes with the territory.

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    1. 0

       pgrundyposted 15 years agoin reply to this

       Oooo. Now I have to go look.
       
       Hate mail bites. I've done maybe one or two hubs that generated hate mail--it's so upsetting--but I have over 100 up now so I guess one or two isn't bad.
       
       You never get used to it though.

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13. 61

    shashigaiposted 15 years ago

    informative...thanks for the question and the replies

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14. 68

    Jerilee Weiposted 15 years ago

    Maybe I took it the wrong way?  I guess it depends on the reasons you write hubs and perhaps your take on affiliate marketing which for me smacks too close to multi-level marketing and involves too much trust and too much hassle.  I'll try not to have such a knee-jerk reaction to such offers.

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15. 0

    terrygposted 15 years ago

    I too agree with Misha and Lissie. The email sounded quite sincere and also quite a professional non-spammy approach. I would take them up on the offer, if your getting the traffic because your keyword is performing then obviously the author of the email has had some success and wants to share.
    
    As an aside, why would anyone send an email to hubpage team reporting external emails they have received. What if you owned this site, what would, or more pertinently, what could you do about external emails being sent to your members?

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    1. 77

       hot dorkageposted 15 years agoin reply to this

       I got that same email, worded differently and it mentioned a specific and real company that they wayted to affiliate me with. Like a turkey I replied to it saying tell me more.  It mentioned one of my hubs by name and the real company was actually related so I didn't even realize that it emanated from hubpages.  That is weird that almost the exact same wording would pop up on some other offer.  Anyway, they never responded back. All they wanted was for me to respond so they could harvest my email.  Damn! 
       
       The way hub pages does emails is they allow whoever to email you whatever they want but they act as a proxy and relay the message to you without revealing your email to the sender.  The sender will only find out your email if you reply to them using your email client. That's probably really what they/re after.  So if somebody threatens to disembowel you, they don't know your email or your address or anything at least not from HP. 
       
       Having said that, it would not be too difficult for HP to disable the contact feature for non members or let us configure whether we want anybody, just members or just fans to be able to use that form to contact us.  I'd limit mine to members because then we'd know who they are and we could hit them back.

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       1. 77

          Lissieposted 15 years agoin reply to this

          Which is why gmail and yahoo are such wonderful email providers - set up another email address just for slightly dodgy contacts like this-  for gmail setup Ithinkyouaredodgy @ gmail.com and then forward that address to your normal address - if you start getting flooded with crap - remove the forward and flag them as spam with gmail -)

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16. 68

    Jerilee Weiposted 15 years ago

    Thanks everyone for all the good advice, I'll have to mull this over.

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17. 71

    Isabella Snowposted 15 years ago

    It's probably legitimate, I've gotten it several times.

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