Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Alert: Polldaddy News

I received an email today which I thought was interesting. It was a very well written newsletter from Polldaddy with the subject Polldaddy News and from Lenny [newsletter<@>polldaddy.com] (angle brackets added by me to avoid a possible email link).

The start of the email contained the following:

Hi Kelvin,



Welcome to the Polldaddy semi-occasional newsletter. Every month or so we’ll send you Polldaddy news and special offers, exclusively for newsletter subscribers. Let us know what you think, and what else you’d like to see in this space. Thanks for using Polldaddy and if you like it, please tell a friend!


I don't recall every using or signing up for anything to do with Polldaddy so I decided to investigate it further.

I checked where the email came from and it was from Texas in the United States. It isn't a surprise to receive unwanted emails from America. In the past I've worked out that America accounts for approximately 30% of spam I've received. That's ten's of thousands of unwanted emails for myself alone.

I then checked the site. It appears to be a standard site set up to get people to click on links which indicates it's primary purpose is to act as an affiliate advertising site.

In summary, until I can find any information to the contrary, this is a spamming attempt designed to get people to the site to click on links which generate the site income. The newsletter appears to be designed to trick you into feeling like you may be a member of their service.

I would suggest deleting this type of email.

- Kelvin Eldridge

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