Long-time readers will recall that I was spammed with an invitation to swap links with the European Human Rights Centre, a plagiarised site that exists to make money out of job listings and Google ads. Well, some more email spam has drawn my attention to something rather different:
From: “Elanor Radaker” <links@bustem.com>
Subject: Wanna Swap Links
Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2007 01:42:37 -0500Hi,H
I’ve been working extremely hard on my friend’s website bustem.com and if you like what we’ve done, a link from <elided> would be greatly appreciated. If you are interested in a link exchange please …
<snip>
Thank you we greatly appreciate the help! If you have any questions please let me know!
Respectfully,
Elanor Radaker
This site, bustem.com, is not quite as the email claims. However, it is not plagiarised. Far from it, the content has been written to order for Privila Inc by some members of a small army of unpaid interns… and when one starts looking, there are literally hundreds of similar sites.