How To Deal With Dead Link Scammers

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One of the unfortunate realities of publishing a ‘wildly popular’ online newspaper is dealing with email scammers… which isn’t fun, until it is.

Most of the hundreds of emails New Matilda receives every day are bog standard media releases. But in amongst that, are every conceivable type of email scam that you can think of.

One of the more virulent is companies looking for New Matilda to link to their own websites. Many of them offer to pay for the links (Like Peter Dutton, New Matilda has a blanket ‘no policy’ regardless of merit) and then others want it for free… and so they try and ‘trick’ you into it by telling you that existing links in already published New Matilda articles are dead, and thus should be updated to something more useful… such a link to whatever horseshit product they’re pushing.

Below is one of the more ham-fisted attempts (the link in the New Matilda article they claimed is dead, was not dead at all) and New Matilda’s response… which we’re pretty happy with, for a Thursday morning.


From: Casey Nox <caseynox@gmail.com>
Date: Wednesday, 19 July 2023 at 18:23
To: Enquiries <enquiries@newmatilda.com>
Subject: 🔄RE: Link Change Request

Hello,

I’m writing you a follow up email regarding removed content in case you have missed the previous email from me.

You have linked to rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719 on your page https://newmatilda.com/2016/06/10/this-is-the-climate-change-election-despite-what-turnbull-or-shorten-say/.
However, this data has been removed from the primary domain. Updated new page you can find here https://edubirdie.com/blog/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math. It would be great to replace the old URL with a new one to keep your content relevant.

Thank you,
Casey


Hi Casey,

Thank you so much. I can’t tell you how grateful. I’ve updated the page with the following link, as per your request: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Go%20fuck%20yourself

Cheers.


Kind regards
New Matilda
http://newmatilda.com

Launched in 2004, New Matilda is one of Australia's oldest online independent publications. It's focus is on investigative journalism and analysis, with occasional smart arsery thrown in for reasons of sanity. New Matilda is owned and edited by Walkley Award and Human Rights Award winning journalist Chris Graham.

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