12 August 2009

Bloggers Beware Patternspace.net

I just received the following email message, and a little searching reveals it is likely a SPAMMER. (caution: righteously angry blogger at that link)

Greetings,
My name is Harrison Barrow and I represent an online gaming website.
Currently, I am doing promotional work, and as such, I am very interested
in the prospect of placing a link onto Giant Battling Robots. Let me know
if this sounds appealing to you. I would be more than willing to
compensate you for your time. If you have any questions, please don't
hesitate to ask. I look forward to hearing back from you.

Best,
Harrison
The answer though, is "no". I don't want to advertise for anything other than my own efforts and those of the friends and game companies I have some connection with. Thank you.

[UPDATE - April 21, 2010]
Commenter SpastikMooss Has provided some of the basic information I was looking for; that Patternspace seems to be a legitimate advertiser, and they run adds for online poker. I withdraw my accusations that they are affiliated with canned meat products.
GBR Giant Battling Robots Favicon

15 comments:

Dan Eastwood said...

I actually wrote him back just to see what sort of reply I might get. I'll update if I actually get a reply.

gooroodesign said...

I actually completed a deal with this guy and received payment...

Dan Eastwood said...

No, you didn't. Sorry Gooroo, but you offer nothing more than an anonymous say-so. Any SPAMMER could have posted that (and probably did).

Mr. Harrison Barrow never bothered to reply to my email either. If there were some evidence that Patternspace is a legitimate non-spamming business, I would consider revising my blog post. Until then ...

Paternspace.net is SPAM

unclemoe said...

They just sent me the same email. WTF.

moe.

Dan Eastwood said...

Hi Moe,

Those SPAMmers are persistent, but not terribly creative.

Brothers Blog said...

Hi I got an email from a different person from patternspace and I did reply and she replied back. So far she seems to be legit. But I was wondering if you had futher info on them or a link you could provide because the last thing I would want is spam on my site.

Thanks

Dan Eastwood said...

This post continues to bring consistent web traffic, therefore Pattern Space is no doubt continuing it's SPAMming practices.

@Brothers Blog: The link above to Clapso's blog gives as much information as I have. The SPAM is the message you already received, the SCAM is falling for their story.

I too wrote them back, asking for details, but they never replied. Pattern Space behaves as a SPAMMER/SCAMMER does, and mostly likely they are. If they are legit it ought to be easy to find out more about them. If they are legit they should be responding honestly to these accusations, trying to maintain a good reputation.

I would be happy to give the folks at Pattern Space a fair hearing if they were interested, but they don't seem interested. Until then, I've already given them too much of my time.

ALWAYS CHASING said...

They emailed me too, but i have a fashion blog...hmmm I'll see if they respond to my email.

peacay said...

Ya know, most of the twaddle in that clapso blog post you linked doesn't really make a lot of sense, particularly the conclusions about the whois data. But I agree that the email they received was pretty odd and probably not deserving of a follow up.
Paid text-linked ads can be kind of kosher. I mean, they're gaming the pagerank system basically: it's SEO by any other name, but although they can be a little dubious in the moral stakes, as long as the proposed site is "reasonable" (pick your own definition) and the way they are linked doesn't really dupe visitors, I'm not altogether sure why there's such a big kerfuffle. Do a deal with 'em, don't do a deal with 'em, but I don't think the approaches from them are (necessarily) spam, as such.

[I'm still thinking about an email I've received which comes from this same mob, but it's via a previous client and not out of the blue; we'll see I guess]

Dan Eastwood said...

Peacay: You may be right, but I still have no evidence they are legitimate.

PS: Your blog is fascinating!

SpastikMooss said...

Just found this post after reading about another email companies spam problem. I got an email from a John @ patternspace and he offered me $100 for an ad for a year. I said sure...he paid me $100 through paypal...the ad now sits in my sidebar and hopefully I'll re-up in June. As far as I can tell these guys are pretty legit, but obviously don't send them checks or anything since I didn't have to!

Dan Eastwood said...

Thanks Spas; You are the first person I can trace back and verify that you actually have a blog and ads. Perhaps PS is legit after all.

SpastikMooss said...

No problem! I was kind of weirded out when they first e-mailed me too, and definitely expected it to be some kind of scam that avoided my spam filter. But once he said just a text ad and that he'd pay me via paypal, I felt fine about it.

Dan Eastwood said...

Out of curiosity (and if you see this), which ad is it? I still don't have much interest in running ads, but perhaps I need to modify this post.

SpastikMooss said...

Mine is for partypoker.com. The ad reads, "Do you like Baseball Cards and other Collectibles? If so, then you may enjoy playing cards as well. Stop here to play multiplayer poker", with "Like Cards?" written above it.