www-goto.com Spam Emails and Edgetech Services
8th February 2006
For three years now, there has been a "website
directory" scam running, where webmasters are sent
bogus "renewal" notices via email, encouraging
them to sign up for a web directory service, various
hosted at www-goto.com or dirs.org.
This scam originally started listed as the Topsites
Scam, but it eventually morphed into many
other different forms.
As of February 2006, the current round of spam emails
are similar to these noted in Google
Groups:
From: The Editor <owner-nolist-x@www-goto.com> Subject:
Please update the [removed] listing by Saturday,
February 4. There is no charge. (Adv) Reply-To:
<listings@www-goto.com>
Could you please be so kind
as to update the description of your website [removed]
in our web directory by Saturday so we can continue
to list you, if you don't mind?
Update your listing for
FREE at:
http://www-goto.com/update.cfm?d=[removed]&e=w
Thanks.
To unsubscribe: http://www-goto.com/cancel.cfm?d=munged&e=w Media
LLC, 1158a 26th St. #528, Santa Monica, CA 90403
USA
As we have already demonstrated
in the past, this is part of a exercise that is
designed to collect fees from webmasters from a service
they did not ask for.
Over the years, the spam email have morphed somewhat.
The current round of emails do make some minimal effort
to comply with the law, but previous versions were simply
fraudulent.
If you receive one of these emails you should report
it to a service such as SpamCop
- you should not click on the link, and if you are asked
for any money you should either ignore it or take legal
action against the sender.
Who is behind the spam?
Currently, there are two parties involved in this
spamming activity. One of them is Somnath
Bharti, based out of New Delhi, India. A recent
article
in the Indian PCQuest magazine probed the
business activities of Somnath Bharti, and made reference
to his spamming operations. Somnath Bharti is directly
responsible for the www-goto.com and www--search.com
domains - two names deliberately chosen to reduce the
risk of articles such as this showing up in Google.
At present, this sites are hosted on 202.14.69.117,
described as "Madgen Solutions Llc Malviya Nagar New Delhi India".
Madgen Solutions are a well-known spamming operation
who have a listing
in Spamhaus's ROKSO database as one of the top 200 spammers
in the world. However, Indian anti-spam laws are very
lax, which is why Somnath Bharti has escapted prosecution
for so long.
The www-goto.com and www-search.com domains
are registered to:
Media LLC
1158 26th Street #528
Santa Monica, CA 90403
US
530-688-9820
Fax:530-504-8433
We've shown
in the past that these addresses are often fake, or
belong to third parties who have been duped into providing
services.
Edgetech Services
But, in fact the Indian spamming operation is a front
for a US-based firm that bought out the original spammers
in 2005. That firm is Edgetech Services (www.edgetechservices.com),
a failing firm listed with the shares EDGH.OB.
Edgetech appear to own the Media LLC business outright,
and they are certainly responsible for many other variants
of the same directory, including websbiggest.com.
This so-called buyout in reality appears to be a reverse
takeover of Edgetech by Paul Aunger who originated
the old Topsites scam (see this company
filing).
The exact relationship between Edgetech and Somnath
Bharti is unclear, but it is almost definitely the case
that Edgetech are fully aware of the spamming operations,
a large part of which has been carried out despite the
CAN SPAM act.
Edgetech Services appears to be keeping a low profile,
but should you wish to serve legal documents, their
current contact details appear to be:
Edgetech Services Inc. 501
Santa Monica Blvd Suite 601 Santa Monica,
CA 90401
At present, Edgetech services appears to be run by
Adam
Radly and Paul
Aunger who appears to be the originator of the directory
listing scam. Paul Aunger claims to be a Canadian cititzen,
but he may now be living in the Caribbean. We have already
documented that there is a long relationship between
Paul Aunger, and Somnath Bharti (the spammer).
It does appear that Paul Aunger has attempted to
"legitimise" the old Topsites LLC spamming
outfit by engineering a reverse takeover of the failing
Edgetech Services business. However, there is plenty
of evidence to show that Paul Aunger has a long association
with Somnath Bharti and is well aware of the continuing
spamming activities.
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