Diving into a Spam Email
My spam email inbox is a very scary place. I get a lot solicitations ranging from insurance offers, to sexual encounters, and to, of course, the classic inheritance from a Nigerian prince.
Most of these emails are straight-up scams with no amount of legality tied to them. They are sent by networks of scammers that want nothing more than to drain your bank account. Some of these emails, however, hide something much more interesting than just a standard scam. They come from a “legitimate” company with very bad ethics and can trick unsuspecting viewers to sign up for absurd monthly rates under the guise of winning a free item.
Scam vs Spam
Scams are when people or a network of people lie to you in order to steal your money or identity. You get nothing in return and they are illegal.
Spam varies in legality and purpose, but most spam is designed to advertise a product or service and deliberately overcharge their customers or unknowingly enroll them in a monthly payment plan. Most of these are small companies, whereas scams are done by unregistered individuals.
In this article, we will be focused on a typical spam email you may receive, how it works, and where it ends.
You won a free gift !
Many of these spam emails begin with telling you that you won a free high-ticket item. Let’s take a look at one together.
Now, if you have never accessed the internet before, you might think that this is legit. I was obviously being sarcastic in my last statement, but the unfortunate truth is that a lot of older folk that didn’t grow up with the internet fall for these types of scams very often. If you are reading this article, then you are very likely familiar with the internet and how to navigate it safely. Your grandmother, on the other hand, is still trying to adapt to a rapidly changing world. She may have heard of her grandchildren doing surveys for money, and think that this might have something to do with that. She won’t notice the spelling mistakes or how sketchy the whole email appears, so she clicks the big “start now” button.
Entering the abyss
We are greeted by a website that says we get to pick a offer of up to $100 if we complete a short survey. The survey asks you if you would ever work at Home Depot, if you use Home Depot for your home projects, if you enjoy going to your local Home Depot, etc.
There are 16 questions in the survey. It is important to note that there is no evidence that the answers on this survey are being recorded.
If you clicked the link in the email and the website it brings you to immediately started showing you the free offers, even the most gullible user might get a little suspicious. The purpose of the survey is to trick the user into thinking that this is a mutually beneficial transaction, and that the 16 vague questions about The Home Depot that they answered are equal in value to the $100 offer.
The survey is about building trust, not gathering data.
The scheme reveals itself
Now that we have completed the survey, we are presented with many different offers, as promised.
As I was browsing through the list, I noticed that many of the products seemed to be knockoffs of other big products, and they were being sold through sketchy e-commerce websites that I’ve never heard of. I would suspect that the survey website must get some sort of commission from the websites that the offers are hosted from, and that is how they are making money.
After browsing through the list, I decide to select a knockoff GoPro product as my offer. I was redirected to a different website.
After clicking the offer, you’re presented with a long promotional page for the camera. The product seems wonderful, according to the description, and all I have to pay for is the shipping!
There are usually two reasons why companies ask you to only pay for the shipping while they give you the product for free:
1. They want your credit card info so that they can enroll you in monthly subscriptions without explicitly telling you.
2. The product is worth less than the cost of the “shipping.” Usually it comes directly from China, where shipping costs for products are nearly non-existent and the products are cheap.
The website, titled “Tactical USA,” then asks for my name and email once I try to get my free product.
The website then asks me to enter my credit card information, and wants to charge me $16 for shipping.
I do a quick Google search on the company, and the reviews all mention one thing: purchasing a product from this company will also enroll you in a hard-to-cancel subscription for $60 a month.
The reviews that I am providing come from trustpilot.com. You can read the reviews here.
During the checkout process, I could not find anything that mentioned that you would also be enrolling in a subscription. Interestingly, however, there is a section about the subscription in the terms and conditions on the website.
Apparently, the subscription is for customers that are interested in “online tactical training.” I searched EVERYWHERE on the website, and I could not find any mention of this training, if it exists or where it is located. I highly suspect that it simply does not exist and the monthly charge is just basic fraud with no elements of a legitimate business practice.
This business is very anti-consumer at best, or a scam at worst. I was trying to find more information on who this business belongs to, and I found that they list an address in Boston.
After looking more into the address, I discover that it is actually for a co-working space and not for a specific company.
Maybe that free offer wasn’t so free after all
When examining the other offers available, I found that all of them had the “pay just for shipping” scheme and that they had similar complaints about people being signed up for a subscription.
The original spam email is from what I believe is a sketchy marketing company, and they gain some sort of commission from sales that are driven through their “offers.” If you don’t know what you are doing, you can end up with many subscriptions that you may not even know you are paying for by taking advantage of these offers. At best, you end up with a cheap Chinese product that cost less than the shipping cost.
These spam emails work
We would not still be receiving these types of emails if there wasn’t an audience for them.
Spam senders earn $7000 a day from ripping people off.
Teaching internet literacy is important not only for the youth, but perhaps more importantly for the elderly. The elderly have experienced so many technological advances throughout their lives, and the Internet is one of the biggest and most dangerous. Unlike the youth, old folk have money that scammers and spammers would love to get a hold of. It is important to teach them how to avoid suspicious looking offers and common internet scams.
As education increases, “demand” for these types of emails will decrease and eventually put these awful people out of business. It will take a long time for any sort of education initiative to roll out and become effective, so it is important to talk to your loved ones about topics like this so that they can be informed while navigating the web.
Until that education happens, there will be plenty of demand for spam. Stay safe.
