There’s never a dull moment when you own your website and are responsible for the content, design, links etc.

I was recently approached by email from a Phoenix Arizona legal company representing a client based in Dubai. Because of the wording of the email, the message went straight to my spam folder so when I went to delete spam messages I saw this particular notice and opened it to check if I should do anything about it.

The suspicious email started with:

I represent the Intellectual Property division. We have identified an

image belonging to our client on your website.

Image Details: https://i.imgur.com/ayRWuj7.png

Location of Usage: https://digitalnomadeurope.com/the-importance-of-writing-a-business-plan/

It then went on to say this:

We require that you credit Dubai SIMS for this image. Please add a

direct and clickable hyperlink (…) This must be completed within the next

five business days.

To the uninitiated, this looks and sounds like a typical request to give full credit to the owner/creator of an image. The email went on to say:

Please understand the seriousness of this request. Simply removing

the image will not suffice. If you do not comply within the given

timeframe, we will have to start legal proceedings under case No. 72134,

following the DMCA Section 512(c) guidelines.

Again, this type of wording is fairly standard for requests to credit image owners.

But do you know what was missing from this request? A demand for payment, which is normally included in these emails and usually the time frame to settle is quite short.

Now, I don’t want to give scammers any ideas but they definitely missed a trick there! Talking of tricks, I thought it was cute that the email also said:

For historical image usage, you can check the Wayback Machine (…)

So I did. No records of using that specific image and a normal Google search and an image search only returned three results with no mention of who generated the image. Do you know why there was no mention? Because the image was copyright free and has been so from the beginning.

I replied to the attorneys saying that I would update the page with a mention of the image owner they could provide me with the confirmation of when the image was created and who created it, and to send me a link with this historical data. I then went on to say:

I am sure you understand my position, I don’t want to add any spam links to my website.

I then went on to check who the actual creator of the image was.

Please bear in mind that my blog post, which the legal services company had identified as missing the image credit, had been published in 2017. The client company based in Dubai had potentially been established in 2023 according to my research so I knew some information was either missing or potentially false/misleading.

I couldn’t find any record of the image Dubai SIMs claimed as theirs on their website. That image had been on my website since 2017 and according to the Waybackmachine their website had only been active since 2023.

I must mention that a blog post I read was extremely helpful in corroborating my dubts on the authenticity of the request and I am grateful for the information I found there so I want to give full credits to Aqueous Digital for all the research they put in.

I even emailed them to thank them for saving me a few hours of searches for background information about the dubious Dubai company.

This was the last email I sent to the attorneys representing the Dubai company and I haven’t heard back since, I wonder why!

Unfortunately your client is using a link building strategy that is against Google’s policy and you are representing a company that has been flagged for spam.

I have downloaded the original image in 2017 and your client was established as a company in 2023. The company’s Instagram profile linked in the website redirects to Razia Alaham’s profile with an “impressive” 10 followers and 16 posts, a LinkedIn profile with an equally “impressive” 7 followers and a “minute slay” 499 followers on Facebook.

You are lucky I am not suing your client for damages.

And that’s a wrap.

So, what have we learned today? While checking the spam folder for genuine messages that may have flown under the radar can be useful at times, the fact that an email had already been marked as spam should be the first red flag.

Secondly, if the email request starts as “Dear owner of (name of website)”, this should also be categorised as a red flag.

Thirdly, if the request is to add a link without any other demand, this is another red flag and we should simply interpret it as a sneaky way to get back links.