Clickbank Spam

For much of this year, there have been huge numbers of spam emails relating to a Flight Simulator game and to Wood Working plans.

These message seem crazy as they are so frequent and sent to the same people and surely if someone wants to buy a Flight Simulator package they will have done so and why would anyone in their right mind buy thousands of wood working plans, supposedly to start a instant carpentry business.

But these two products are very very popular on Clickbank.

Clickbank is a marketplace for people selling products online (mostly digital products) and people wanting to make money by helping to sell those products as affiliates of the seller. These people earn commission for each product sold.

Typically an affiliate will use a website (their own or other people’s) and send out emails to attract people to a website that sells the product (sometimes  called a sales landing page).

This marketplace works well for a lot of people but sometimes very high commission is offered on stupid products and the world fills up with spam.

e.g. Ted’s Wood Working Product offers 75% commission to affiliates getting people to visit Teds sales page and buy the product.

The original sales pitch is for thousands of wood working plans for $69 but then there’s an upsell and more sells and the average purchaser ends up paying over $125 in total.

Ted’s Wood working claims to be number one 1 in Clickbank’s home and garden category for 5 years running, so people flock to try to sell the stuff and the world is full of stupid emails claiming you can make huge money making wooden objects within days of reading the plans.

e.g. 2. Virtual Pilot 3D Flight Simulator offers 70% commission on sales and claims sellers make an average of $88 per sale including upsells and more sells.  They claim to convert page views to sales at the rate of 8% so eight in every hundred people visiting the sales page go on to buy the product.

Again, people flock to sell this product and the world is full of stupid emails claiming this software can make you a real pilot or is good as actually visiting the places depicted etc. Idiots use any line to try to get people to the sales page.

Oh to rid the world of spam!

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The Order Processing Scam

An email titled “Your Order Number 967025 Has Been Processed”

It continues “Dear Client, please check your order details to ensure everything is correct”

Your Order: 967025

Date: 22/9/2017

Order Status: processed

Payment Method: Credit Card

Delivery Method: 2-3 days by Fed Ex

Then full address and contact details for EJRN Shop in London

And a breakdown of the items etc.

All looks very official, but of course it’s a phishing scam – designed to get you to click and provide account details on a fake webpage.

Many of this sort of scam message is full of grammatical mistakes and spelling mistakes to put off most readers but this one is very professional.

The giveaway that it’s a scam is that the supposed shop name is EJRN whereas the email is from flock-it-to-me.com and I’ve never ordered anything from either company.

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Bitcoin Mining Steamrollered

Bitcoin is the world’s most popular cyber currency – a currency that only exists in digital form, not in any physical sense.

There is a limited quantity of Bitcoin in the world because the means to create more is a very clever, computing intensive process that gets progressively more difficult to achieve as there are more Bitcoins. In time it will become impossible to create any more Bitcoins.

This protects the value of the Bitcoins already in existence.

Bitcoin mining is the process that allows the creation of new Bitcoins and it involves solving complex mathematical puzzles using vast amounts of computing power and in turn that means using huge amounts of electricity.

One Bitcoin is worth many thousands of dollars, so for those who can, Bitcoin mining can be profitable.

However, to make money at this usually involves using stolen computers and stolen electricity on a huge scale, so it is largely done by criminals using stolen computers running on stolen electricity.

Bitcoin mining is increasingly recognised to be an ecological disaster.

In Malaysia, Bitcoin miners stole $2 million worth of electricity siphoned from Sarawak Energy power lines, so the authorities found the culprits, seized 1,069 bitcoin mining computers, laid them out in a parking lot at police headquarters and used a steamroller to crush them. The video of this went viral.

Six people were charged in relation to the Bitcoin mining.

Good riddance to the criminals and their computers.

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

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The Patriot Power Generator

There is a genuine product called a Patriot Power Generator and it’s for sale in America.

It is like it sounds but also things you don’t expect. The basic version contains:-

  • a power generator
  • Solar Panels
  • a 72 hour survival food kit
  • water filter
  • multi tool
  • reports about the power grid problems etc

there are endless spam emails trying to sell these devices.

I can’t imagine these things selling well in the UK except for camping or caravans. But in America some people have the mind-set of not trusting the government and thereby wanting to take precautions against various extreme eventualities such as a long term power outage.

Californians already know what power outages are like – thanks to the days of the Enron Corporation.

The email selling these power generators focuses on creating paranoia

“It’s 8:47 am and people are panicking in the streets…

We are now in a state of emergency.

The look of fear in your family’s eyes hits you like a punch in the guts”

There’s lots more of this stuff.

Seems a very nasty way to sell power generators.

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