Spam Or rather Wierd Spam ...

"I just searched in Google for wooden ship model and found feelinglistless.blogspot.com ranked 94. I have a related website about Travel - Cruises that's purely informational (so I'm NOT a competitor of yours) and I'd like to link to your site.

I consider my site to be one of the best resources for this type of information. I get a decent amount of visitors to it so if I link to you, your site should get some decent traffic from it.

I only link to good quality sites... I think you'll find my site to be high quality as well. In exchange, I would ask that you also link to my site. I've already linked to you and will keep it there for a few days until I hear from you. Please let me know asap if you're interested and i'll send you my information.

Thanks!

Angela Palmer
Email: angela@racsystem.com"

Five reasons why this may well be spam...

(1) There is of course one thing missing from the email ... the web address of the site which is supposed to be so professional. But if you think latterally and use the email address (copy and pasting racsystem.com into the browser) you actually find a site, which will frankly give you the wiggins and which needless to say doesn't link back here anywhere. So I don't see why I should (not directly).

(2) On the front page of the site 'Angela' says ...

"Hi, My name is Angela, I will be graduating from college with a BA in English next year, but don't get me wrong! I'm a computer geek just like you are! I work as a human editor for a search directory, I also do some web design work and freelance writing in my free time, I hope you enjoy my site!"

No one can complete a college course successfully and hold down that many jobs. What free time? In addition why would someone be a "human directory" -- sure they have computers for that -- unless someone has managed to finally tap the unused part of the human brain.

(3) Her resume says that between 1992 - 1998 she was Freelance Media Planner. Then from 1998 to present she is a Senior Copywriter and goes on to list a mass of companies she's worked for. So that's eleven years. Assuming she started work at the age of 21 that makes her thirty-something. So she's looking young for her age in that photo. There is a reason for this. It's a cut and paste job from this sample resume page from job bank usa. If I was Amy Smith I would be pissed that some other fictional character was trying to steal my life.

(4) I've actually checked and I'm nowhere in the first 100 results on Google for "wooden ship model" and quite what they have to do with Travel - Cruises I'm not sure. At no point on the website does 'Angela' show us her collection of boats. She lists her hobby as reading suspense mystery books and her favorite author is Mary Higgins Clark, which is oddly also this Angela's hobby as well. Giving the benefit of the doubt, this girl has had that career and been able raise little Alicia. Busy.

(5) If she was a web designer, there is no way the front page of her website would look like that. In addition she like to randomly pick people to email. This thing was also CC'd to the email address I recently published for The Magnet and for the Sooz charater mailing list for the US version of 'As If'. It's not me, honestly.

What I really don't understand is what Angela's creator is trying to sell. The site links to Amazon etc but I'm sure it's not their work. I think this is a case of a reply being an invitation for more spam. Needless to say ... I'll let this one go ...

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