Hmm. Just got a spam email:
Hello,
Your site https://www.timworstall.com was recently nominated to receive a free donation page hosted by GiveAlways.com. You can start receiving donations immediately.
The address for your donation page is (blah blah) Click here to login using the username & password below.
After logging in simply click the "Generate HTML" link and you will be supplied HTML snippets to add to your existing blog or web site. Payments are sent on a monthly basis when the balance is over $50. Any balance under $50 will be rolled forward into the next month.
Use your donation page to offset the costs of owning your website, collect proceeds for your favorite cause or support the needy in your area. Your website gives you a voice, use it for good.
Hosting a donation page on GiveAlways.com. makes sense for a number of reasons:
- There are absolutely no startup costs or any direct costs to you.
- Your supporters don\’t need to login to donate, they only need a credit card.
- We accept recurring donations. Your supporters can chose either "one time", "weekly" or "monthly" donations.
- Roughly %96 of all funds received are sent directly to you.
- If you never receive any donations there will be absolutely no charges of any kind. It is %100 risk free.
We look forward to the opportunity to serve you. Please don\’t hesitate to reply to this email with any questions!
(If no action is taken within the next 30 days your donation page will be deactivated.)
Thank you,
The GiveAlways.com team
In the absence of any information to the contrary I\’m going to give my opinion and call GiveAlways as a phishing operation. Not on you or me, who might get one of these messages. But on those who might whip out their credit cards to make a donation.
Just doesn\’t sound right to me. Why would you spam such a service?
Solid information to the contrary will of course lead to both a change of mind and a change to this post.
The 96% thing sounds odd. At first glance, it suggests the service could be legit (i.e. they take a 4% cut from each donation and make their profit that way).
Except… that 4% has to cover costs, credit card charges and all the rest. It’s hard to see how a legitimate operation could make serious money with this business plan.
So, were I of a sufficiently high profile to merit spamming with such things, I would probably decline to participate.
If they are legit, and they haven’t foreseen this reaction, they are rather stupid.
This is off-topic, but Richard Murphy claims you’re not banned. It sounded a bit though like he was saying you’re merely not permanently banned but may be allowed to comment again if he changes his mind about you.
I wouldn’t be using a company like this whose webpage contains no information whatsoever.
Registrant:
none
561 Tegler Dr
Union, Missouri 63084
United States
Registered through: Webhost4life
Domain Name: GIVEALWAYS.COM
Created on: 24-Dec-08
Expires on: 25-Dec-09
Last Updated on: 24-Dec-08
Administrative Contact:
Gerdel, Andrew [email protected]om
none
561 Tegler Dr
Union, Missouri 63084
United States
(314) 288-8218
Technical Contact:
Gerdel, Andrew [email protected]
none
561 Tegler Dr
Union, Missouri 63084
United States
(314) 288-8218
Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.DNSSERVER8.COM
NS2.DNSSERVER8.COM
I especially love “It is %100 risk free”, as that is standard 419-speak! (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance-fee_fraud)
agn:
There you go, again—beating up on those 419s!
I’ve been racking up some pretty nice commissions these past years tending to some of these urgent requirements. Five million here, three million there, pretty soon it adds up to real money. And, beside the fortunes in commissions
you can accumulate, these guys all need someone to manage the investment of their own funds–some mighty lucrative deals in that aspect of the business, too.
I can’t believe how so many can continue to think these are some kind of fraud (Oh, ye of little faith.)