Tag: website links

Stupidest Spam of the Week Website Links

Everyone with a website or blog wants lots of people to see it. There are many ways to achieve this but helping people to find it on search engines is the most popular method for most people.

One of the ways to improve the likelihood of a website coming high in Google search or other online search engines is to create lots of backlinks i.e. links from other people’s website to that one.

These should be created properly i.e. by getting links in sites related to yours and where the link is relevant and meaningful e.g. a link to Brooklands Radio from a retailer who plays Brooklands Radio in their premises or from an artist featured on Brooklands Radio or from a local business that advertises on Brooklands Radio.

However, lots of unscrupulous people try to bypass this slow process by buying links from link sellers. They charge typically $20 – $50 for hundreds of links to be created.

These are usually very poor links in that they are from sites with no relevance to your web site and probably stuffed with hundreds or thousands of such meaningless links. Google and other search engines recognise this and ignore any links from those sites.

This latest email says “We provide guest post and link placement on our fitness and health site for $95 per link”. 

That’s extremely expensive compared to other link providers.

No-one in their right mind would actually pay this, especially as the email is from a Gmail account which means there is no business and no business website, just a dumb scammer.

The last line in the email says “The price is negotiable.” which reeks of desperation.

Too bad, loser.

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Fake Website Links

You will come across fake website links in emails, on websites, social media, text messages and more.

In this context, “fake” means a link that doesn’t take you where it says but instead goes to some other website or web page.

Why do people make such fake links?

Mostly there is a deliberate intention to mislead – promise a link to one site but take you to a different site where you don’t want to go.

This may be an attempt to infect your computer with malware or to get you to a page you have little interest in or simply to get you to look at a video or a webpage for which the link poster gets paid per visitor.

How to Identify Fake Links

  1. On a PC hover the cursor over the link and it should show the real destination URL. If this does not match what the link says then you have a fake link and you should not click it.
  2. On a MAC make sure you have the status bar showing first
  3. On Android phones you can press and keep your finger on the link and a box will open offering options but at the top it shows the complete link

Shortened URLS

Some webpages have very long addresses and if you’re sending a link to someone or posting on Twitter for example then some way to shorten these links would be welcome.  There are various services on the Internet that can do just that.  Twitter does this automatically for long links.

These shortened URLs make it difficult to identify the destination of the link. If in doubt – do not click.

Very Long URLs and Email Addresses

Most people create short URLs i.e. links as they want them to be easy to remember and to type e.g. fightback.ninja/the-inflammation-scam/

But some large websites deliberately create long URLs in order to make the purpose of the page easy to understand  from the name e.g. http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/content/animals/kidscorner/classification/kc_classification_appearance.htm

Scammers use long URLs in order to try to hide the true destination of the URL.  E.g. customerservice.lloydsbank.768092676414336492872654576277@78397123719273917cheapscam.com

That is not Lloyds Bank.

Scammers also use the confusion trick with email addresses e.g. customerservice.lloydsbank.768092676414336492872654576277@78397123719273917cheapscam.com

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