Scam ?? "IBoats" email

Status
Not open for further replies.

kend301

Lieutenant Junior Grade
Joined
Jul 4, 2009
Messages
1,005
Just got this in my e-mail . The content is in red .
Congratulations! We have noticed you and your great contributions on the iboats forums. We selected you as one of the 3,000 most influential iboats forum members out of 195,000 members! Thank you so much for your participation and time spent on iboats.
Why is iboats contacting you? Because of your high level status on the iboats' message boards, we are inviting you and our other top 3,000 members to be part of the pre-launch of our newest and upcoming community areas. We want you to experience these new areas first and hope that you will then give us specific and critical...as needed...feedback which will greatly help us to create these community areas the way that you want.

The first area you are invited to join and start participating in is our iboats' facebook page. Please follow the link below to visit our facebook page and then click on the "become a fan" button at the top of the page after logging into your facebook account. This is a new page for iboats and it will be exciting to see how quickly it grows and develops.

http://www.facebook.com/iloveboating

Once you join our facebook page we will then start offering other exclusive sneak previews to our whole new community area (a top secret iboats program that has NOT been announced yet publicly) that is coming to iboats in the early Spring. We want you, the best of the best of iboats members, to experience it first so you can help us make it just right for you.

Thanks again for being a part of iboats and please feel free to email me with questions or suggestions.

Tanner Williams
iboats Social Media Mgr.
twilliams@iboats

I know I have posted alot and tried to help as many people as I can but I am wondering about this !
 

JB

Honorary Moderator Emeritus
Joined
Mar 25, 2001
Messages
45,907
Re: Scam ?? "IBoats" email

Not a scam. Some people are getting the same thing labeling them as one of the top 500, 1,000, etc.

Cost nothing and gets you active in the facebook world.

A real plus for the very socially active members.
 

kend301

Lieutenant Junior Grade
Joined
Jul 4, 2009
Messages
1,005
Re: Scam ?? "IBoats" email

Glad to hear it JB .. going to join tomorrow !!!
 

kend301

Lieutenant Junior Grade
Joined
Jul 4, 2009
Messages
1,005
Re: Scam ?? "IBoats" email

'Top 500 " Huh .. cant find the bird on my smilies !!! LOL !!!
 

Vic.S

Rear Admiral
Joined
May 4, 2004
Messages
4,720
Re: Scam ?? "IBoats" email

Came here to ask the same question

Suspicion aroused when hovering over the link showed it to be apparently to something totally different.

Typed in the URL instead of clicking on it and I got to a legit Facebook site..

Best to regard these things as suspicious unless proved genuine I think.

The Facebook site might be legit but still wondering about the email!

Anybody actually clicked on the link in the original email and still got a functioning computer and their bank balance
 

i386

Captain
Joined
Aug 24, 2004
Messages
3,548
Re: Scam ?? "IBoats" email

Well I reckon the cat is out of the bag now.:D BTW did the rest of you top 20'ers pick the T-Shirt, hat, or Coozie? I can't decide.
 

sonoramike

Seaman Apprentice
Joined
Nov 21, 2005
Messages
32
Re: Scam ?? "IBoats" email

appreciate the email - but the url in the link looks spammy, I wouldnt ever touch that link.

you've got one link in text on the page, but that is linked to a totally different url when you do the mouseover on the URL.

page link shown: http://www.facebook.com/iloveboating

actual links to : http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?et=110300...4VVWYlzPbA04b69wvu15qn0ABx6wTChHeHpyhN9YYVXs=

not bitching or complaining - but doing that is bad form. hindsight always being 20/20 it would have been better to have the link go to an iboats url which in turn would fwd tot he rs6.net domain. just saying
 

Summer Fun

Banned
Joined
Mar 2, 2002
Messages
2,251
Re: Scam ?? "IBoats" email

Anybody actually clicked on the link in the original email and still got a functioning computer and their bank balance
Yep its a trusted link :).
BTW did the rest of you top 20'ers pick the T-Shirt, hat, or Coozie? I can't decide.
That hurts that I didn't make the top 20 invites for the free goodies. :D
 

Expidia

Commander
Joined
Aug 26, 2006
Messages
2,368
Re: Scam ?? "IBoats" email

Be careful because if you are already a Facebook member and you type in your screen name and password you reveal your real name when you write on the wall for the world to see.

That's pretty dumb because you might wake up one morning and find someone from Nigeria just stole your boat :D

Seems like there was no rhyme or reason how they picked our names.

My guess is that Iboats "sold" their member list to Facebook or in exchange for iboats advertising on Facebook.

And why would we suspicious when one reads their first sentence: Congratulations! We have noticed you and your great contributions on the iboats forums. We selected you as one of the 3,000 most influential iboats forum members out of 195,000 members! Thank you so much for your participation and time spent on iboats.

How great a contribution does one make after only a few posts???
This is a free site but nothing is free . . . Our personal profiles have just been sold to others :(
 

Yepblaze

Lieutenant Commander
Joined
Jun 1, 2001
Messages
1,686
Re: Scam ?? "IBoats" email

I made top 500 but replied "I don't do Facebook"
 

redfury

Commander
Joined
Jul 16, 2006
Messages
2,657
Re: Scam ?? "IBoats" email

probably based on the posts per day statistics as to how active you are on the site as to the ranking you got for the email...that'd be my best guess.
 

marlboro180

Lieutenant Junior Grade
Joined
Jun 23, 2009
Messages
1,164
Re: Scam ?? "IBoats" email

I got the invite to facebook too , but that will never happen for me...
 

waterinthefuel

Commander
Joined
Nov 15, 2003
Messages
2,728
Re: Scam ?? "IBoats" email

Yea I got this too. And I don't do facebook.

I was in the top 500.
 

tashasdaddy

Honorary Moderator Emeritus
Joined
Nov 11, 2005
Messages
51,019
Re: Scam ?? "IBoats" email

Tanner is a part of the Admin team at iboats, he is new to the forum.
 

Jeep Man

Commander
Joined
Oct 17, 2008
Messages
2,803
Re: Scam ?? "IBoats" email

Tanner is a part of the Admin team at iboats, he is new to the forum.

I got the same email and was in "the top 500". I knew my smarta** mouth would pay off some day.
Mine says it was from Tanner. Is this sent out by iboats or facebook?
 

trendsetter240

Lieutenant
Joined
Jun 22, 2009
Messages
1,458
Re: Scam ?? "IBoats" email

My guess is that Iboats "sold" their member list to Facebook or in exchange for iboats advertising on Facebook.

No, that is not the case at all. Iboats created a Facebook page and wants you to join. Basically they want you to associate yourself with Iboats on Facebook.

Nobody has sold anything to anybody, the link and email are legit. Its your choice to join or not. Personally I did not but that's only because I hardly use Facebook anymore.
 

steve201

Petty Officer 1st Class
Joined
Dec 2, 2006
Messages
252
Re: Scam ?? "IBoats" email

I got it also...but like many others..I don't do facebook....I have enough problems with all the boating/gun/did I say boating sites??...

Steve
 

dave11

Lieutenant Junior Grade
Joined
Dec 2, 2007
Messages
1,195
Re: Scam ?? "IBoats" email

I don't do facebook either.
 

Admin5

Senior Chief Petty Officer
Joined
Jun 29, 1998
Messages
683
Re: Scam ?? "IBoats" email

I am very happy to report that your fears are completely unfounded. I personally oversaw this effort. This is a legitimate outreach to our most active forum contributors. We SOLD NO INFO TO ANYONE!!!! Come on! Are we really that bad? You should know iboats by now. We care about our customers and forums members! :)

Here is how we did it: We chose the 500, 3000 and 6000 most active forums members in the last 6 months and sent that email to them. We used a service called Constant Contact to send the emails. They changed the URL for tracking purposes so we can see how many ended up opening the email and clicking over. There were no virus's associated with that link. sorry. :)

Why did iboats do this? We are the undisputed king of the boating community because of all of you. We need to stay that way. We can't ignore the other social media sites out there so we are also reaching out to the millions of boaters there. We hope that they will like us and come join all of you here in the forums and the other great places we are working to create for you all that will be launched in the upcoming weeks and months. Just call it progress. You have my sincere apology for doing something that caused you concern. As a peace offering here is an iboats discount code for free shipping at iboats for most things over $95 this next week: SHIP4FREE Hey, we are a store after all. Can't blame me for taking an opportunity at some shameless self promotion. ;) Have a great weekend.


Be careful because if you are already a Facebook member and you type in your screen name and password you reveal your real name when you write on the wall for the world to see.

That's pretty dumb because you might wake up one morning and find someone from Nigeria just stole your boat :D

Seems like there was no rhyme or reason how they picked our names.

My guess is that Iboats "sold" their member list to Facebook or in exchange for iboats advertising on Facebook.

And why would we suspicious when one reads their first sentence: Congratulations! We have noticed you and your great contributions on the iboats forums. We selected you as one of the 3,000 most influential iboats forum members out of 195,000 members! Thank you so much for your participation and time spent on iboats.

How great a contribution does one make after only a few posts???
This is a free site but nothing is free . . . Our personal profiles have just been sold to others :(
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top