If They Spammed You, They Can’t Help You!

Spam is unsolicited email. Spam is illegal. Therefore, we may conclude that any company that sends you unsolicited email advertisements for their services is breaking the law. We may further conclude that their primary aim is NOT to help your company to grow.

This little piece of logic seems to be set aside each time we receive spam email that contains something we are hoping might be true. That a company that is breaking the law really DOES want to help us get to the top of the search engines. That a company that is breaking the law will honor their word. That a company that is breaking the law somehow will give us what we want at a lower price and higher value than good companies that DON’T break the law.

Sometimes I think there is just a disconnect. We forget to think of it in those terms.

The rule is one you may depend upon to keep from getting ripped off by email scams. If it came through the email, and you did not ASK for it specifically, it is Spam, it is illegal, and the company that sent it is either too ignorant, or too dishonest for there to be any kind of good outcome if you risk it.

Some companies may be sending from outside the US, where it may not be illegal. But… consider…. Do you want a company to work for you, promoting your company worldwide, that is not aware of the laws of your own country? We have actually seen such companies do things on behalf of site owners that were huge legal risks in the US, and which are likely to come back and harm the site owners. If you pay them to do something, then you may also be held liable for any misrepresentation, false statements, or claims that they make on your behalf. If they are ethical, and want US business, they’ll take the time to learn, and RESPECT, the laws of the US.

SEO scams are one of the most rampant, we have businesses contacting us almost daily about this, asking us whether it works or not. Oh, some of them will do the tasks they say they will do. But they do them SO BADLY, that they don’t do you any good at all. You will be throwing money down a hole – and in some cases, the things they do can actually HURT your business. Many other scams are not just false on the end, they are false right from the get-go. They will take your financial information and abuse it with no pretense of delivery of anything.

It doesn’t matter WHO the business is. If they send you an ad, and you did not sign up for it FROM THEM, or if you did not ask a question on a forum that they replied to (and mentioned the forum), or if a friend did not introduce you, or something else that tracks them to a known source, it is illegal for them to send you the ad!