Scam Emails

Due to a proliferation of what appear to be scam emails that purport to increase online visibility through optimising my website, and keyword integration for SEO via online sites (amazon), I have removed my Contact Form to try to divert this issue. 

I recently read a book called Scam: Inside Southeast Asia's Cybercrime Compounds which explores and interviews some of the thousands of people kidnapped, conned into, and employed to work in huge compounds where they learn to write enticing emails that end up in a "brilliant" investment opportunity for the receiver. These people are often working 24 hours a day, are not allowed to contact outsiders, and are kept inside prison-like locations behind barbed wire with guards out front. They are often beaten, raped, tortured, and murdered if they don't reach target goals. Authorities have made progress in shutting down some of these compounds, but many are still in operation, hence the continual filling up of my spam email folder.

What is surprising, is that these new emails have come directly from the contact form that I added to this website, allowing access to my publishing email. It has been very clear that the writers have scanned all the necessary information from my profile, typed up an email that sounds like it is sent from someone who wants to help me reach a wider readership. But none of these emails have shown any signs that my books have been read, or that they have been bought. Their only goal is to convince me that if I pay a sum of money, then my online visibility will improve. They also assume that I, as a New Zealand writer, has money to throw away, when the reality is that what money I once had was spent on producing the physical books, and now I'm left with boxes in cupboards, and hardly an extra dollar to save towards buying a new pair of socks with.

I tried to play with one or two of the emails with replies saying "Go ahead and do the work - when I see the results and the money starts rolling in as a consequence of your work, then you will get paid." After all, the economy we live in requires the labourer to put in the hours of work before they get paid, so I applied this economic reality to my replies. The scam email writer showed some savvy, and were persistent in giving me a deal where I could pay certain amounts first over a period of time, if I wanted to. I trashed the conversations. 

Now that I know what stresses these people are under (and who knows, maybe some are independent having figured out they could do the same from their bedroom), I have decided the best course of action is just to ignore them. The more I became knowledgeable and understood the situation, the more I realised that it would simply be better to ignore all scam emails. The only way that this can truly be ended is if the scam industry has no fish biting their hooks.