A warning, this hot prospect (see blue text below) was generated by my website, a scam, or maybe I just gave away a mutli million dollar lead!

The question is how did this generate, have they actually visited website? If they have collected email address, how? it only goes from website to our inbox.

Since we have trouble finding our own website http://www.langstoneteam.com how did they come across it?

Has anyone with a website or Point2 Agent website had the same?

You are receiving this message because a prospect has emailed you from your website.


Name:Michael Denis

Email:michaeldenis@myway.com

Comments: Dear sir, I am a consultant to Mrs. Rose Yohanna, the wife of the deceased fomer minister of petroleum in republic of benin as at year 2000, The husband deposited some amount of funds with a financial security company thruogh our services as his financial consultant. Recently, the deceased family members urged that i should seek for foriegn assistance to invest this fund into a profitable / low risk ventures which will yield greater return on the invested fund. So i seek for your kind advise and assistance as a foriegn person that must have good knowledge of the business and investment climates of your country in question. Their area of intrests are; 1 Real estate; (commercial) 2 Shares/ stocks/bonds 3 others But we rely solely on your adise and guidance for this issue and the feasibilty studies of these areas listed . Hope to recieve a favourable response on this proposal. Regards Mr Michael Denis Email :(michaedenis@myway.com).

Regards
Alan
p.s. If not scam - referal please.

It's a total scam.

These spammers have bots that crawl the web looking for mailto: links (i.e, email links.)

It doesnt' take long for them to find you.

Also, any time you use an email address online it has the potential of making its way into spammers lists.

I solved the spam issue by using Gmail as my email client.

I find that both gmail and yahoo mail have really good spam filters. The one provided by my cable service provider does not. I use gmail for all my real estate related communications. Not only does it do a great job of filtering spam, I never need to worry about running out of space. Not only that, but if gmail is used in conjunction with Picasa, Google's free photo editing program, I can email lots of photos with one email (I once sent 47 photos in one communication).

I think that Gmail is an easier system to use (i.e, attaching a file in Yahoo is kind of clumsy and has unnecessary steps!) and it it also much faster. I hate my yahoo account and use it as a spam catcher for online registrations, etc.

I only wish Gmail would add a few emoticons, but that's probably part of what makes yahoo so slow...

I don't care about emoticons one way or the other, but I have a problem getting gmail to attach pdf docs. If anyone knows how to get this to work, I would really appreciate knowing this.

I have never had a problem attaching anything on gmail!

They also have bots that will fill in the forms on your site. One just found yours. If the problem gets out of hand you can use a captcha system to help slow it down.

I too have recently had a spike in these and my email is flooded with these spammy emails.

I probably get 10 a day for viagra and things to enhance my male lower extremities...except I'm not of the gender those apply to.

It's a common spam e-mail which I receive the same kind of e-mail on a daily basis.

As another member has stated, they search for mailto and email addresses, there is not much you can do to avoid them unfortunately, I have changed my spam rating on the server to delete anything more than 6.00 - if you do it any higher such as 5.00 or 4.00 you many lose real e-mails so it is better not to set it too high. Training your mail server is one way is you are getting hit big time by spam, but for the odd one or two spam emails I wouldn't be worried.

Maybe your e-mail address has been sold on to a bulk e-mailing company and you will receive no end of spam e-mails, the only other way around it would be to change your e-mail address.

Yeah, these kinds of emails are in circulation all the time. Think about it: if someone had a multi-million dollar asset, why on earth would they not only tell a complete stranger about it, but also only communicate through email? It doesn't add up.

Anyways, these kinds of emails have been circumventing themselves in email boxes across the globe for years and years. Just think of it this way: if it's too good to be true, it probably is.

I suppose this is what we call unsolicited mail or spam mails. Spams range from small CD selling company mails to Viagra mails. Everyday We all spend so much time filtering and deleting spam that our biggest concern is that we should not lose messages we really want. So my question here is that is it actually possible to get rid of these spams??Any clues guys?

I used to have to wade thru over a 1000 spam emails a day buy now I hardly see any - I wrote a blog article last year about it - see How To Stop Spam - I now receive just 1% of the spam I used to get!

well said Doug - enjoyed your blog and would only add that use of webmail response accounts in lieu of mx hyperlinks also goes a long way to defeat spam bots and "you" on mailing lists - si ?

On a slightly different note. What is the definition of Spam?

Unwanted emails for Viagra, various body part enlargement services, etc. - Spam
Unwanted advertisement emails that you haven't signed up for, local & national stores, banks, home improvement tips, etc. - spam

How about emails from real estate agents to real estate agents, just listed, list sold, property for sale, come and join our company? Is this community information or Spam or personal preference.

I presume the answer is in the word SPAM, but what is spam in practice?

Regards,
Alan

These unsolicited SCAM mails are such a waste of time. Everyday we have to spend so much time filtering and deleting these spams and still have to worry about not losing messages we really want. I just wonder where do these guys get my email address from and what do they get out of it?

Landwatch,

See Perky Realtor's comment "These spammers have bots that crawl the web looking for mailto: links (i.e, email links.)"

As far as what do they get out of it, I think the idea is to releive you of your hard earned money.

Regards
Alan

I believe the original poster was talking about spam bots that are filling in the forms on his site.

Yeah that is definitely SPAM!!! And so is drip emails from Realtors to their so called "leads"....Drip email is SPAM!