Another wonderful nomination. I wish I knew who I impressed so much that they keep nominating me in all of these registries.
The text changes slightly, but the theme is the same:
Dear Maxwell,
You were recently chosen as a potential candidate to represent your professional community in the 2010 Edition of Who’s Who among Executives and Professionals.
We are please to inform you that your candidacy was formally approved March 1st, 2010. Congratulations!
The Publishing Committee selected you as a potential candidate based not only upon your current standing, but focusing as well on criteria from executive and professional directories, associations, and trade journals. Given your background, the Director believes your profile makes a fitting addition to our publication.
There is no fee nor obligation to be listed. As we are working off of secondary sources, we must receive verification from you that your profile is accurate. After receiving verification, we will validate your registry listing within seven business days.
Once finalized, your listing will share prominent registry space with thousands of fellow accomplished individuals across the globe, each representing accomplishment within their own geographical area.
To verify your profile and accept the candidacy, please visit here <removed> . Our registration deadline for this selection period is March 7th, 2010. To ensure you are included, we must receive your verification on or before this date. On behalf of our Committee I salute your achievement and welcome you to our association.
Sincerely Yours,
Chris Jespersen
Nomination Committee Secretary
Who’s Who among Executives and Professionals
2631 Merrick Road, Ste 203
Bellmore, NY 11710
Confidentiality Notice: This e-mail communication and any attachments may contain confidential and privileged information for the use of the designated recipients named above. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that you have received this communication in error and that any review, disclosure, dissemination, distribution or copying of it or its contents is prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please delete the communication and unsubscribe from the mailing using the options available in this email.
We only support ethical email marketing. To remove yourself from future mailings, please visit here <removed> to use our automated removal system. You will be removed from our mailing database within seven (7) days. 11701
Thanks<removed>
The links that I have removed go to a custom link at “fruitlet.positivemines.com”, which is clearly linked to each email address being spammed. If one goes goes to this link, they are redirected to a semi-legitimate looking opt-out page at “track1ing.net”. I actually tried it out with some random tracking numbers which surprisingly worked – sorry to the person I dobbed in. These URLs themselves give away that they are just trying to mine your email address.
A quick whois on both of those domains reveals that they were only set up on 27 Feb 2010 and 22 Jan 2010 respectively – hardly reputable domains that I’d want to be dealing with.
As official as they try to make these emails look, do yourselves a favour and avoid them like the plague. Never ever ever click on any of the links for removal on any spam email, as all this does is confirm to the scammers that your address is real.
Sadly, humans are often far too gullible for their own good. Deep down most of us want recognition and respect, even if it comes out of nowhere. If you have found this, at least you are intelligent enough to check the validity of these unsolicited emails. If only enough people were that smart, the spam and scam purveyors of the world would go out of business!
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