A few days ago, I got at LinkedIn a comment from Richard T. at my post about making fair business between campaign brokers and call centers. Richard T. seems to be such a broker or consultant, which feels himself attacked by my posts. He seems to be afraid about losing his golden business. He calls himself to be a "Senior Accounts Executive at BlueStar Marketing".
He has written: "Fair Business" LOL,what planet are you from? Your evaluation of risk is shallowly determined.It only takes into consideration finance.The biggest risk I take in my dealings goes far beyond immediate financial risk.When brokering a deal I am risking reputation as well.My reputation is priceless.Whats fair is what ever you contractually agreed to.The word FAIR is very subjective Sir.When we negotiate a contract we are evaluating risk to reward and trying to find a settlement that works for both parties.Some times it just doesnt work.Trying to create a universal agreement based from your bias perspective is very cute but very naive in the real world.For what its worth,I do find your posts entertaining.I also think your proposal can be fair but you must remember that fair is subjective and unfortunately an oxymoron when placed besides business......."
It seems that he has a reason to hide himself in the anonymity of the internet. His domain bluestarmedicalsupply.com is hidden by a proxy service and his toll free phone number 1-855-328-2317, written at the homepage cannot get found by a reverse lookup.
alexa.com says about the bluestarmedicalsupply.com: We don't have enough data to rank this website.
worthofweb.com gives a value of $102 for the domain bluestarmedicalsupply.com
google gives for bluestarmedicalsupply.com a pagerank: 0/10
Google lists only 12 links to the site bluestarmedicalsupply.com. All of this links are only about valuing the site ranking in a different way. There is not one relevant link, which can be used for a reputation.
I did not find one positive or negative comment about Richard T. and his website bluestarmedicalsupply.com. Only his comment at my post here at LinkedIn destroys his own reputation and makes him untrustworthy.
The only question is now: About which reputation is he writing in his post? I did not find any reputation about him. The one recommendation, which is listed in his profile, can be coming from a good friend too.
LinkedIn group posting
Since I have started my private war against the scammer, I have noticed that a lot of people at LinkedIn have changed their profile picture. Some of them have put their real picture at their profile and some have removed their pictures. This one, which have removed their pictures are trying to hide something from you.
Every scammer likes to hide his identity, because he likes to disappear as soon as he received your money. For this you should ignore offers, which are coming with the following fails:
- Profiles without pictures
- Profiles with pictures from celebrities, photo models, animals, flowers, arts, company logos, etc. Use Google image search for finding out such pictures.
- Domains, where the domain owner is hidden by an anonymization service
- Domains, where the domain owner is named like “Domain Admin”, “Domain Owner”, etc.
- Domains, where the email address of the domain owner is an address of a freemail service. They have needed a real email address too for registering their freemail address.
- People, which like to communicate with you only by using a service from a freemailer. It is ok, if the first contact is done by a freemailer, but afterwards they should use their own email address.
- People, which have no other contact possibility then skype. They are only wasting your high valued time
- Offers, which sounding too good to be true (like get thousands of dollars for doing nearly nothing). Nobody can give you money as a gift
- Offers, which suggest you that you need to be fast to get it. Take a look how many times such offers are getting repeated. You have all time of the world to prove the offer and for making a background check
- Offers, where you have to pay any fees like upfront, consulting, etc. for getting it. Even they are a fake if they are promising it that you get it back after a few months.
How to identify scammer by using free tools
I think that everybody has joined LinkedIn for the same reason, because LinkedIn promotes themselves in the career and business network. Where is business, there you can earn money. Where you can earn money there you’ll find criminals too. Money attracts the scammers like moths to a flame.
Networking means coming closer and make something together. In the case of LinkedIn should it be managing careers and/or making business together. In the human nature is it programmed, that everyone is first thinking about their own interests and not about others. This greediness makes it difficult bringing people together. LinkedIn is not able to check each subscriber. The most of them are only entering as less data as possible by signing up. Once they have their account they will change their data as needed. They even change their names and pictures like they enjoy it. They are able to do this even during a communication.
Every business man/woman knows:
- Offers, which are sounding too good to be true are coming from criminals
- Nobody can give money as a gift in business. Everyone likes to earn more than he can give as the sum from the purchase price of the product and the given commission.
- As higher the promised commission per sale is, as more difficult will it be to sell the product
- Products, which are not able to sell, are getting bundled with the argument of social work or a charitable purpose like children hospital, help for the 3rd world, etc.
If you are thinking logically, then you would find out already the criminals on their offer on observing the above rules. In every case you should make a background check of your contact before you get in business with him. If you find out something negative, then give him the chance for an explanation. If the explanation is unbelievable and makes him more untrustworthy, then push him into the public and publish what is your opinion. This will help others in making their own decisions.
If everybody works this way, the scammer and other criminals will not have any chance in betraying others.
How to identify scammer by using free tools
By surfing around in the groups at LinkedIn, I have found only one campaign for call centers, which has been looking like a true offer. It has been posted around 9 months ago and the offer has included everything which is needed to make a decision for a call center owner. The poster got more than 800 positive replies to his offer.
Why in this case the spammers at LinkedIn are posting their offers every few hours and are using all possibilities for hiding themselves in the anonymity of the Internet?
If I’m making a real offer and have a good description for the campaign, then I’ll get a lot of replies and be able to make my choice by posting it only once. It seems that there is something wrong with their offer, as they are posting the same offer many times.
What is the purpose for spamming, if the spammers are not scamming? Are they collecting only email and skype addresses?
Nearly all users are already using free mailers at LinkedIn . This makes an immediately change of the email address possible whenever it is needed. It seems that these users made already the experience that their email addresses are getting sold for getting more spammed.
There is an old rule on the internet: "Don’t buy from spammer, you’ll get scammed". Especially new centers shall think about this rule if they don’t like to lose money.
Another rule is "As better the offer seems to be, as higher is the risk of running into fraud".
If someone is calling himself to be the "BEST", an "INDUSTRY LEADER" or something similar, than this one is proud about his success and is not hiding himself in anonymity, because his name is his trademark.
How to identify scammer by using free tools