Why is eLearners emailing me, and how did they get my email address?

[sanantone]

I used to have a forum account on eLearners, but I signed up with a different email address. I have received two emails from them at the email address I used to sign up for this forum. They are asking me to remove links to their website from my posts on this forum because they are "perceived as unnatural and are harmful to our website and your website as well." What in the heck does that mean? I'm just mad they have my email address.

[JBtesc]

They are asking me to remove links to their website from my posts on this forum because they are "perceived as unnatural and are harmful to our website and your website as well." What in the heck does that mean? I'm just mad they have my email address.

The email that they are emailing you at... about this forum... is the same as the email you use... for this forum... I'm guessing?


You've been cease and desisted, lol.

[sanantone]

Yes, I don't know how they got an email address that I used to sign up for this forum. When they had their own forum, I used a different email address.

[JBtesc]

Yes, I don't know how they got an email address that I used to sign up for this forum. When they had their own forum, I used a different email address.

They are not contacting you; the person who was signed up with their forum.

They are contacting you; the person who is linking to them.



If this is the only place you've linked them... then this is the place that they got the contact info.

[sanantone]

I know that, so that is why I'm wondering how they got my contact info from here. Is my personal email address visible somewhere on this forum? Did DegreeForum give them my email address? How come they just didn't contact the administrators of this forum to have the links removed? They called this my website, and we all know it's not. This whole mess about being unnatural and harmful is strange. Their email address is from gmail. It sounds like spam, but they went through the effort of including links to most of the threads with links to their website.

[JBtesc]

I know that, so that is why I'm wondering how they got my contact info from here. Is my personal email address visible somewhere on this forum? Did DegreeForum give them my email address? How come they just didn't contact the administrators of this forum to have the links removed? They called this my website, and we all know it's not. This whole mess about being unnatural and harmful is strange. Their email address is from gmail. It sounds like spam, but they went through the effort of including links to most of the threads with links to their website.

"unnatural link" is common language, a generic term, I'm sure you're not the only one they've sent this to.

It sounds like they're just covering their bases because they've had some kind of issue with link spam.

I don't personally see an email address for you on this site, but I'll keep looking.

The occams razor answer is that they first contacted this forum and this forum supplied your contact info. It would make sense that this forum would remove the links, they haven't? They would still want to contact you though, with a... cease and desist (heh) ... to make sure you know they're willing to proceed with legal action if you are in fact linking them for nefarious reasons.

The tinfoil hat answer is... gmail man. lol. Gmail/google knows all.

You say they used a gmail account, is yours gmail also?

[sanantone]

No, it's not a gmail account. It would be wrong for this forum to share my email address with a third party, especially one who is using Google email. eLearners is an established website. Why would they be using gmail? Wouldn't they have their own email domain? Who has an issue with link spam? The links are on this forum. If this forum thought the links were spam, then they would be the ones with the problem and contacting me, not eLearners. There is nothing nefarious about this forum, and they did not threaten legal action. They just politely asked me to remove the links in a very strange way. They referred to this forum as my website. This is not my website.

[sanantone]

It looks like Google is the issue with their policies on bad backlinks and artificially improving search rankings. However, this site is not spammy. The links are posted in threads where people ask for this kind of information. I'm just directing people to a website where they can search for online programs. Anyway, it looks like eLearners is using Rmoov.com because they included the link in the email. I think Rmoov somehow got my email address. I find this disturbing. They should be getting the contact info of DegreeForum. I'm still not fully understanding this whole bad backlink thing. It sounds like a very flawed system.

[JBtesc]

No, it's not a gmail account. It would be wrong for this forum to share my email address with a third party, especially one who is using Google email. eLearners is an established website. Why would they be using gmail? Wouldn't they have their own email domain? Who has an issue with link spam? The links are on this forum. If this forum thought the links were spam, then they would be the ones with the problem and contacting me, not eLearners. There is nothing nefarious about this forum, and they did not threaten legal action. They just politely asked me to remove the links in a very strange way. They referred to this forum as my website. This is not my website.

Google the term "unnatural link", you can better wade through the results than I applying your specific details/circumstances.


You'd have to read the fine print of this sites "terms of service" to see what their policy is on relaying contact information to websites which contact them with a potentially legal concern.

There are spam links, unnatural links, which put unnecessary tax on a server.

For example, if you have a "bad" or unnatural link... it could be sending unwanted traffic there, in other words, not humans who might actually be consumers... but bots , pharming/phishing or just getting lost... whatever these bots do , that serves no benefit to the site but actually costs them.

It doesn't matter that YOUR link wasn't MEANT to do that. All that matters is that they have had SOME kind of problem and they are trying to route it out.

IF - they went through this forum first, which would be my guess, then, again you'd have to check the TOS to be sure they don't have the legal right to relay your contact info in such (quasi-)legal cases.

IF - they just have ninja hacking skills to find your email address, that's also not anything we can do anything about.

IF - you believe it did not actually originate where it says it did, I would just report it as spam/phishing/etc. to your email provider and ignore it.

[JBtesc]

It looks like Google is the issue with their policies on bad backlinks and artificially improving search rankings. However, this site is not spammy. .

Yep.

This site doesn't have to be spammy though.

We've all experienced how google searches this site better than this site even searches this site.