Anyone getting spammed with ridiculous link requests?

[scottmc]

Recently I have been receiving quite a number of e-mails from some of the largest poker related websites requesting ridiculous link exchanges. For linking to their large site I can get in return a link from a links page of a pr0 site that is not even cached by the search engines and looks like it has been thrown together in 5 minutes along with a 100 similar sites. Gee what a bargain! See an example e-mail below which represents a typical spam link exchange e-mail I have been getting.

My speculation is that the very large website that has been hit hard by tripping a Google filter (see latest Alexa figures) is desperately trying to regain visitors via its' large network of affiliated sites.

------------------------------------------
Subject: Profitable Deal!
Greetings webmaster!

If you belong to a site that is keen on a high google ranking then welcome
to our site.
We exchange free links and continuously work toward increasing the PR of
all interesting pages our site. We, at easycaribbeanstud, believe in
benefiting our partner site too along with us.

If you are interested in this deal, why don't you join us?

The deal is: You put our partner's link on your site. We will put your
link on our site. View it here easycaribbeanstud.com.

Link details of our partner:

Title: xxxxxxxxx [Details removed for now: scottmc]
URL: xxxxxxxxxx [Details removed for now: scottmc]
Desc: xxxxxxxxx [Details removed for now: scottmc]

We also put forward another exciting activity of ours - article writing!
We write nice articles related to poker/gambling and other similar games.
We let you choose the topic and we give you a unique article written only
for your site.

Join us in either of these details or both of them as per your site
requirements!

Waiting for a positive response!
Don
xxxwww.easycaribbeanstud.com

[PPP]

Just got this idiotic spam from pokerjunkie

While preying on the stupid is an age old business model, it's never worked very well for long in this industry.

[GoodKarmaKid]

I got the same lame email about carribean stud, some serious spam. I think I might get about 1 reasonable link exchange request for every 100 that land in my box.

[scottmc]

I think everyone has received crappy link exchanges but these really take the cake. The thing I am getting out of this spamming is that by looking at the website design and whois information - most are using DNSMADEEASY name servers coincidentally las does PokerListings - which websites appear to be part of the same large network. Below is a list of the websites that these e-mails want me to link to. Please feel free to add more:

xxx.learn-texas-holdem.com
xxx.pokershopping.com
xxx.casinotop10.net
xxx.casinotoplists.com
xxx.rakerebatereview.com
xxx.topstudpoker.com
xxx.pokerpromotion.com

[PPP]

Today's spammers casinoinspection.com casinotop10.net

[scottmc]

Todays new twist - instead of asking for a 3 way link exchange of Crappy Spam Site > Me > Big Network Site I have been asked for Crappy Spam Site (xxx.pokerscan.com) > Me > Crappy Spam Site 2 (xxx.femalepoker.eu) .