I just got an e-mail from these folks. They claim for three dollars they’ll send a letter to the White House for you. My charitable opinion is these folks are dishonestly trying to cash in on people’s concerns about gun control. My less charitable opinion is that this is a total scam. It would not surprise me if they are not even based in the US, given that the e-mail came from a gmail account. I would not have anything to do with them, and if you see people promoting this, please help spread the word. I normally would ignore stuff like this, but with people on edge, it’s opens the community up to being taken advantage of.
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There are usually two dimensions to these scams. One of course is to make money, right up front. The second is to harvest contact addresses. I’d guess the second may be the greater motive with this one, as each address can potentially be worth more than $3 to them. They will have identified a “conservative” audience, and one where the participants will already have pegged themselves as gullible leaning toward sucker.
For the sake of complete honesty I need to add to the above.
This may not actually be a “scam,” in the sense that very likely they will do what they promise to do, for your $3. You are however giving them your contact information, which you have no idea how it will be used.
I worked with a guy some years ago who, with a partner, would every few months set up a card table in a mall and give out free chances on a Caribbean cruise. It was totally legitimate, as they did award the cruise, by a fair drawing, and the participants were given an accurate appraisal of what they would receive if they won. It didn’t involve hidden fees or anything. But, they made good money by selling the mailing list. Good enough anyway, to allow them to profit after paying for the cruise, sufficient to make it worthwhile to sit at a card table at a mall for a weekend.
I have been very aware of contact harvesting going on in recent years with political organizations. My problem with it was, that the contacts were to be used not only by the organizations doing it, but by unidentified other organizations that I suspected were less savory. The internecine theft and cheating that went on to acquire contact lists bordered on astounding.
Some of you may have heard recently that Gary North announced that the contacts acquired from the Ron Paul presidential campaigns were going to be used for the promotion of a commercial “Ron Paul Freedom Curriculum” (?) sales campaign to homeschoolers, and that name-gathering has been the underlying motive for the campaigns, as “Phase I” of their commercial plan. That is only one example of how these things are used in the conservative/libertarian milieu.
The who is look up shows everything as private except the domain broker. I would cal that a red flag.
Yeah, they provably have a reason to hide who they are…..
Just from a common sense perspective, why would you pay $3 to have someone else send a letter for you?
I can send a heck of alot more than 1 letter for $3 doing it myself! And personally I’d think a hand written letter might carry a little more weight that a computer generated letter, as it shows you are willing to actually DO something more than push a few buttons.