Apr 17 2008
Google’s Phishing Campaign for Paid Links
Here’s a little story for all my tin foil hat wearing conspiracy theorist friends out there who have reason not to trust Google. (In the interests of full disclosure, I do not trust Google for a variety of reasons (which is an entirely separate blog post). That being said, my opinion is admittedly biased with respect to Google.
But recently, I’ve been tracking a very suspicious phishing campaign (of sorts) that appears to be an attempt to ferret out paid link buyers. I know it might sound a little crazy, and I may just be totally nuts (wouldn’t be the first time I was accused of that) but hear me out on this one.
I recently received several spam emails from several, self-proclaimed “SEO Marketers” looking to sell text links and blog post reviews. The first one that I received appeared totally innocuous: