If you own a website, you may get people contacting you offering to write articles for your site.

This is often people looking to be paid for the articles and that is OK.

Sometimes it is people wanting to write articles without pay – they want exposure for their work or just to have their name and writing on a known website.

But there are also scammers who offer this service and they want to steal from you.

A recent email starts with “I am David & I am currently working on an online campaign with a client who would be interested to post an article on your website. The article would discuss topics relevant to your readership and include a natural link to my clients website.”

The senders email address is david.outreach0 @gmail.com which is obviously a personal email address rathe than a business email address so that tells you the message is a scam.

Plus, “…topics relevant to your readership” means the sender has no idea who this email is going out to so is very likely to be part of a mass scam mailout to random email addresses bought on a spam email list.

If the message was genuine, then it would be tailored to the receiving company not for random email addresses and the author would anticipate a reply by email.

However, the email contains a link which is a goobledegook one and tells me to put in my details at that address.

No thanks – keep your scam.

If you have any experiences with these scams do let me know, by email.