Fake Kontera Email Warning – Updated
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Mar 3, 2009
Earlier this afternoon I received an interesting email from Kontera. Here’s the email:
Subject: Updated Kontera Publisher Agreement – Please Review
Date: Tue, 03 Mar 2009 22:58:55 +0000
From: Kontera
Reply-To: Kontera
To: mitch@imjustsharing.com
Dear Mitch Mitchell,
The purpose of this e-mail is to notify you that Kontera has updated its terms and conditions applicable to your use of the ContentLink Service. The agreement is also available for your review online here.
If you continue to use the ContentLink Service thirty days after the date of this e-mail, or if you deposit or cash the next revenue share check you receive from us without sending us a notice of your objection to the updated terms and conditions, you agree that the new terms and conditions will govern your use of the ContentLink Services thereafter.
Please don’t hesitate to contact us at agreements@kontera.com if you have any questions.
Sincerely,
The Kontera Team
If you no longer wish to receive these emails, please reply to this message with “Unsubscribe” in the subject line or simply click on the following link: Unsubscribe
Kontera
1550 Bryant Street
Suite 975
San Francisco, California 94103
US
Now, what you don’t see in this letter are the links that came with it. What you do see, however, is the email address that supposedly came from Kontera. It’s NOT Kontera’s domain name, and that’s what made me immediately suspect. None of the links were from Kontera either. I know that because I use Mailwasher to check my email before I download it to my computer.
So, I knew it was fake. I also decided to do something about it. I went to the domain name the email originated from, and found that it’s basically an email service provider not unlike many others, and they had an email address where we could report abuse. I decided to give it a shot, and I sent them an email, along with forwarding the email I had received, and said I hoped they would do something about it. Five minutes ago I received their response, which I’m not going to fully post, saying they had opened an investigation and had removed my email address from “their” account, which is the account of the people who sent me the email. Of course, I’m hoping that this is legitimate also, as the email came from a company called Vertical Response, which is an email service provider for small businesses that want to run email campaigns, newsletters, and the like, and they seem to be well thought of by those who use it, but of course it’s a different domain name than the one I originally sent my email to, and, of course, that type of switching always makes one suspect.
Still, we’ll see what happens. However, I felt it was important enough to put this message out, just in case anyone else gets one.
** ** ** ** ** ** ** **
Followup: Please see this response below:
Hello Mitch,
My name is David XXXXXX and I oversee the Account management department here at Kontera. I saw that you had posted an email we sent out referencing it as a fake email, but it actually did come from us and was sent out as part of our process of updating our publisher agreements.
I see where there was some confusion, as because of the volume of emails we sent out, we used a third party email marketing company to send these notifications. The email links go directly to that company and then forward to us so that we can respond appropriately. So, I appreciate your attention to detail on this and it never hurts to take a skeptical approach to emails you receive due to the enormous amounts of spam out there. However, as this email did indeed originate from us and is not spam, I’m wondering if you can either remove the blog post you did referencing it, or correct the post so that any readers of yours are not confused. Your help with this at your earliest convenience would be much appreciated.
Please let me know if you have any questions and I’ll be glad to help with anything you need.
Thank you, Mitch,
David XXXXXX
Manager, Publisher Services
Kontera
So, I have not removed this post, but I am posting their response, indicating the original email was legitimate. I’m glad they did this; I’m actually stunned that they read this blog and then responded. But I’m extremely happy; that’s pretty good customer service, I must say. This is the positive side of affiliate marketing, the relationships, as well as the sales; I hope to see more of it as I go along.
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Mitch Reply:
March 4th, 2009 at 12:35 AM
No, no, you THOUGHT it was a fake, but you THOUGHT incorrectly. This is, indeed, the real thing. Any intelligent marketer would know that.
The vresp domain sending the email directly coincides with the vertical response domain (it’s just shortened for whatever reason).
The links you were pointed to in the email? All of them go directly to Kontera’s website. Nothing fishy there.
This is typical for this domain / subdomain, any amount of researching would tell you this. Phishing / fake? Not so. This was a legitimately farmed out mailer letting you (and me, and all other Kontera publishers) know there were changes coming down the road.
Understandably, it looks fishy, but since they’re not actually trying to GET any information from you, it’s not. I mean, they even redirect all the links back to kontera, that’s all email marketing and tracking!
Mitch Reply:
March 4th, 2009 at 10:08 AM
So, my intelligence might be on attack here, but my computer remains safe, my complaint has been logged, and, as I said, both parties will now decide how to proceed from this point on.
Of course, it doesn’t tell me HOW this is guaranteed, or how they’ll pay me more since they paid me half as much as infolinks when I used them. Kontera is a shady company that’s all I’ve got to say.
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Mitch Reply:
March 4th, 2009 at 10:10 AM
Anyway, you did good. ANY suspicious emails should be forwarded to the proper people for verification.
The eBay and Paypal scams started this whole mess years ago.
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Mitch Reply:
March 4th, 2009 at 11:59 AM
Sire´s last blog post..Chitika The Mark Of A Good Affiliate
Mitch Reply:
March 4th, 2009 at 5:26 PM