Forum Moderators: martinibuster
A fellow, known to me as a very rational person, approached me this evening, he had six months or more ago searched Google for "Green Widgets".
By pure chance he ultimately landed on one of my sites. He didn't know this at that time. That's quite important.
Looking around, he came upon an Ad which I identified as could only be from Google AdSense. He liked the ad/product which I can't identify here. He clicked on it.
He claims he had to go through some convoluted process including giving his email address. Since that time he's had nothing but a bombard of emails from XYZ.com
He's tried numerous times to get off this list.
Back tracking, he went through his steps from day one to the point he got to my site and recognised my photo on the site and my contact information.
This evening he confronted me over this and castigated me for running a "scammy site". He was unaware that I have been on the internet for well over a decade and I'm actually "white hat".
It wasn't hard to calm him down, I readily received the benefit of the doubt. While only knowing one another casually, we have justifiable mutual respect for each other over equal community contributions.
Now he is going to pass along a heap of stuff on this to me in coming days.
BUT what to do? The man is no fool by any standard, takes all proper precautions, acts as any reasonable person would.
YET, in responding innocently to an AdSense Ad [could be on your site] he gets caught up in a scam of some kind which will not leave him alone.
Who do you complain to? The dilemma. I can't walk away and say tough!
What to do? Walk away and my life long community credibility and standing are in shreds!
Who do you complain to?
He signed up for something and now he's getting spam email. I'd call him on the phone right now and welcome him to my world. Tell him next time use a throw away email addy.
...and castigated me for running a "scammy site".
Did you check to see if this site is flagged in SiteAdvisor?
I've found all sorts of slime showing up in AdSense including such easy to detect things such as DOMAIN PARKS and even expired websites.
The kind of garbage that slips through the cracks can easily be detected yet it goes unchecked.
Why?
I run a directory site and I check for that stuff and suspend it from my listings and if a little old directory can identify such sites, a big bad AdWords advertising platform should pick up on these as landing pages as well.
I would go ahead and complain to Google but I'd also make a public issue with more details than you have here to show people what's happening.
I'm not sure why you need to accept any "blame" for what happened because Google AdWords/AdSense is a much larger company, the sole owner of that ad space, and has the resources to either detect such scams directly or via a 3rd party source like SiteAdvisor.
Best thing to tell your friend is to flag the source of the email as junk and move on.
I think he or you should tell google about this particular advertiser's practices.
First step would be to block the site.
I understand what you say but, just when your friend entered his email address it is not your problem anymore. People underestimate the risks of giving their email addresses.
