For a while now, clients have occasionally forwarded us emails that they have received via their forms on their websites. The emails claim that the dentist has infringed on their copyright over an image. They look like this:
These emails have an aggressive and manipulative tone, and dentists are afraid of their marketing turning into a legal and financial nightmare. I hate to say it, but the people sending these messages are lying, trying to steal from you and/or harm your computer. You shouldn’t have to deal with this spam. Unfortunately, there’s not much we can do to prevent them from coming in, but we’re going to clear up what to do when you get these.
Spam Spoiler Alert: Just Hit delete
You’re more than welcome to forward these messages to your Pro Impressions Account Manager for peace of mind, but you can also save yourself a little bit of time and an email by just deleting the messages.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Do NOT flag these emails as spam when they come from your website. Notifications from your website about someone sending an “email” through your website are actually emails sent from your website’s server. If you flag server-generated notifications like this, you risk sending future messages from your website into your spam or junk folder.
Even if you don’t forward it to us, these messages are handled on our end in this way:
- We verify the message for authenticity.
- We make sure that the email is not marked as a new patient lead or ad conversion.
- We look to see if the email address can be filtered from future form completion notifications.
- We delete the message from our inboxes if it’s bogus.
- We have used royalty-free, paid stock photography services for years to avoid these claims, and will continue to do so.
Our ability to prevent these messages from hitting your inbox is limited. These messages are usually entered by hand using cheap labor to manually spam websites. Because there is no bot in play, we are unable to prevent the individual from sending the message using a website contact form.
They almost always use different @gmail.com email addresses. This means that we can’t use our server programming to filter out the messages by email address. Too many prospective patients use Gmail, so we don’t want to risk missing a potential new patient lead.
The text in the body varies and could change at any time. This means that we can’t filter the message out by message content.
Do Not Take The Bait – Just Delete It
What should you do if you receive one of these emails? Do not click any links in the message. Just delete it. We’ve seen actual copyright claims come through in the past. They are sent by U.S. mail—not via your website. They are also sent by a verifiable photography brand—not an individual who just says ‘Click this suspicious link or I’ll sue you!’
To be clear: we do not use random images on the internet. We pay well-known companies a license fee for gorgeous, royalty-free stock images. This means that once we pay for the image, you are clear to use it on your website forever without paying again. We purchase these image licenses at no additional cost to you, and there is a paper trail for every image we download.
Do NOT click the link in these emails. Doing so will almost certainly mean you’re downloading a malicious piece of software or opening yourself up for further malware, phishing, or computer hacking attempts. Just delete the emails. You have nothing to worry about as long as Pro Impressions Marketing is directing your online marketing.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to call your account manager at (970) 672-1212(970) 672-1212.
