8th February 2006
For three years now, there has been a "website directory" scam running, where webmasters are sent bogus "renewal" notices via email, encouraging them to sign up for a web directory service, various hosted at www-goto.com or dirs.org.
This extract explains more
This scam originally started listed as the Topsites Scam, but it eventually morphed into many other different forms. As of February 2006, the current round of spam emails are similar to these noted in Google Groups [1]:
From: The Editor <owner-nolist-x@www-goto.com>
Subject: Please update the [removed] listing by Saturday, February 4. There is no charge. (Adv)
Reply-To: <listings@www-goto.com>
Could you please be so kind as to update the description of your website
[removed] in our web directory by Saturday so we can continue to
list you, if you don't mind?
Update your listing for FREE at:
http://www-goto.com/update.cfm?d=[removed]&e=w
Thanks.
To unsubscribe: http://www-goto.com/cancel.cfm?d=munged&e=w
Media LLC, 1158a 26th St. #528, Santa Monica, CA 90403 USA
As demonstrated in the past, this is part of a exercise that is designed to collect fees from webmasters from a service they did not ask for.
Over the years, the spam email have morphed somewhat. The current round of emails do make some minimal effort to comply with the law, but previous versions were simply fraudulent.
If you receive one of these emails you should report it to a service such as SpamCop [2] - you should not click on the link, and if you are asked for any money you should either ignore it or take legal action against the sender.
Too learn more click on this link: Spam Emails and Edgetech Services by Dynaomoo [3]
Very good article by the great people over at Dynamoo.com teaching you what to be aware of