I receive an email from [email protected] (full text below). The email claims that they are looking for internet marketing assistants, VA’s, Web content writers, copywriters and are offering a substantial monthly salary. If this salary is Philippine Peso it’s ok for a start, but if the figures were in USD, it’s a big wow for me.

Before this incident, I have not heard anything about platehead.com, so I did the usual cyber-sleuthing. Saw some comments from other Bloggers inquiring about this email spam run. I asked Spiderham and he said that some of his blogger friends got the same email too and they are branding it as spam. I have my own conspiracy theory but I forgot to write about it until today.

I checked their website again and it seems they have an advisory already. They claim that a hacker/spammer got access to their email and send it out. While I don’t 100% like their message and their delivery, I will give them the benefit of the doubt, because:

• This is BAD publicity for their site
• Anybody (or any site) can be a victim of such type of attack
• I want to focus on the possible implications to the community, more than put blame on affected website.

Some curious observations:

• The email spam addressed me using my full name and not the name I have available publicly (in Twitter, Linkedin, and Google+). I used this name in two or three pinoy blogger events together with the email address the got the spam.
• The email spam seems to be focused on Filipino Bloggers, checking posts and those who commented to the platehead.com advisory.

Given these two, I believe some distribution list of Filipino/Pinoy Bloggers got compromised.And our email addresses and names are out in the open…

And not surprisingly I am getting several other spammy mails (and I am investigating it on my free time). But that may be worth of another post in the future.

To platehead.com admin/staffs, thanks for the notice but I offer some unsolicited advice: in your message it will be better to add some assurance that it will not happen again. Also an about page is good so that the blogosphere will know your site and your writers more.

The full text of the email spam

Hello <full name>

We are looking for committed individuals to add to our team as internet marketing assistants/Virtual Assistants/Web content writers/copywriters

Job description:

You will be given a wide array of internet marketing related tasks and projects, especially search engine optimization work.

Tasks would include writing blog posts, publishing articles, web development, creating joint ventures with other websites, etc.

Skills required:

You must be fluent in written and conversant in the English language

You must be proficient with web-mailing, browsing, word processing, spreadsheets, etc.

Experience with building/managing websites and HTML,CSS,PHP, etc. are preferred.

Internet marketing experience preferred, but not required.

College degree preferred, but not required.

“Willingness to learn new skills useful for Internet marketing”

Pay:

13000-14000 per month starting pay.

How to apply:

Please submit atleast 1 article about “Information Security & Techonology” to [email protected]

This job is 3 hours a day and 5 days a week we offer high compensation for qualified employees.

Thanks

How about you? Did you receive this [email protected] Email Spam too?

I will try to update this article with other pinoy bloggers post/s about this issue.