in Writing Exercises

New Phishing Scam Asking for Link Changes

Today I had an email (sent from the contact form on my thegrrl.com site) they asked me to change my links from indieblogger.com (which closed in 2007 or thereabouts) to another domain. They claimed they were the people running Indie Bloggers (though they only referred to it by the domain) and were moving everything to this other domain which they also own.

It is possible you will be sent notice to change links when another site moves – but it almost never happens. Most sites move and don’t send out notices. Far more likely they will notify people on the site and avoid sending email (which would take more time).

I am accustomed to checking links. I was an editor with a web directory for years. So I investigated indieblogger.com and the domain which I was asked to switch to (I’m not giving the link, deliberately, because I don’t want to link to them). First, indieblogger.com is still in park, no content. Next, I went to the other domain. There was no mention of Indie Blogger. I checked their navigation links, no mention there either. I searched the site for Indie Blogger and the results came back as zero.

So, it is certainly a scam and I will not be changing any links on my site.

I reported it as a phishing scam because this domain is trying to claim they are some other site. They are looking for free links on blogs which used to be part of Indie Blogger, back in 2007 and beyond.

Watch for anything like this yourself. Don’t go ahead and change a link, assuming the email is legitimate. Don’t give scammers free links on your site.