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Emails from fortitudehosting.com – Legitimate or not?

November 22, 2008 by debbie T | Internet

A few days ago, I received an interesting email regarding paid advertising on one of my other web sites:

Hi my name is Jeff and I came across your page http://www.debbietdesigns.com/learn/13/web-hosting/ which would be great for a text link to my client, www.geekcertified.com .

What I am looking for is a small text link, web hosting, incorporated into the article.

If you keep it for at least a year, I will contribute $75 up front by check or pay pal. Which would you prefer?

Jeff Watson
Marketing Manager
Fortitude Hosting
www.fortitudehosting.com

Note: I am not listing any active links to either site, I will not give them free linkage!

I was intrigued, so I googled "www.fortitudehosting.com" to find further information.

I found someone that received the same type of email, which led to finding this forum post.

I also searched for "geekcertified.com" – they are a web hosting certification service, not a web host company. It appears they were semi-respectable at one time, but the domain owner put the domain up for auction in 2007 and the site was sold.

A quick whois on both domains proved that both were PRIVATELY registered with moniker.com. Does anyone else think it’s strange that a hosting company would be registered privately? LOL.

Even though my findings were telling me to stay clear, I was still intrigued. It wasn’t the money, I just knew it would make an interesting article if I followed it through.

So, I replied to him confirming the details.

Hello Jeff,
I would like to know the details of this transaction. You would be paying me $75 and I would be adding a text link (for one year) to the www.geekcertified.com web site on the page you referenced. You would be paying me in advance.

Is that correct?

Here is what I received as a reply from Jeff:

Hi Debbie,

Yes I will pay you upfront, i.e. not after a year is up. All you need to do is put the link up, provide your pay pal address and I make payment immediately.

If we are going ahead, could you put the link on the third paragraph of your article in this sentence…… "This is a great way to get your feet wet without signing a commitment for a paid web domain and web hosting."……

Turn the text "web hosting" into a link using this code:

<a href="http://www.geekcertified.com" title="Web Hosting">Web Hosting</a>

There are a few things wrong with this picture:

First, the subject of the 3rd paragraph on my web page is "Free Ad Supported Web Hosts"
The phrase he wants inserted has nothing to do with free hosting.
And while we are speaking about free hosting, geekcertified.com is not a free hosting service, they don’t even certify free hosts, only paid

Still playing along, I replied:

I don’t feel comfortable with adding content that I didn’t write into my article, especially when you want me to add it to a paragraph that has nothing to do with the link. You would like me to add it to the "free" hosting paragraph, but geekcertified.com isn’t a free host.

Do you want to rephrase that link?

To which he replied:

I understand what you mean. Geek certified is a free web host reviewer. Unfortunately the link is to the home page and I cant rephrase it. Thanks for your time

Well I can’t let him off that easy, so I wrote:

Thanks Jeff,

I checked over their site, and I found no free hosts. All I found on their site was two lists of paid hosts. Not sure where they would be, but it wasn’t evident when I looked, which means it wouldn’t be evident to my visitors as well.

Hmm, he is still interested, he wrote:

Would you have a another page which would be appropriate?

haha, let’s see what happens now.

Jeff,

No, that page is fine, it’s just the paragraph doesn’t fit with the link.

In fact, the paragraph text you wrote for them doesn’t really fit the company at all.

You said: "This is a great way to get your feet wet without signing a commitment for a paid web domain and web hosting."……

but they are not a web host. It really doesn’t make a lot of sense, because as you said they are a web host reviewer, not a web host. Very confusing. I am really not sure what kind of advertising that gives them if it doesn’t tell the truth!

Last email:

That’s okay Debbie,, maybe we should pass. Thanks for your time

And that is where I left it.

After, I did a further investigating on the www.fortitudehosting.com website.

The Shoddy Website

Check out their web page for hosting plans, they didn’t even bother to remove the "placeholder" text from the template they bought. And the funnier thing is, this criticism has been mentioned online at least a month ago and they still haven’t bothered to change it.

There is no online order form or shopping cart for ordering hosting from them, you have to fill out a contact form with your detailed personal information. Talk about untrustworthy!

Another funny mistake is on two web pages (order & company) they never changed the title on the template. It states "Riztech Hosting"

A quick whois for "ritztechhosting.com" shows the domain is available.

A google search for "Ritztech Hosting" reveals fortitudehosting.com as the #1 result.

What’s the Verdict?

So, what have we learned here?

Yes, the email is a scam. Maybe not a typical monetary email scam, although I didn’t follow through to find out. My guess is yes, he probably would have paid me the $75. But it would have been at the cost of my own integrity. How could I possibly add such a foolish link to a web site that is pretending to be something they are not.

Fortitudehosting.com and geekcertified.com are both sleazy dishonest web sites. Under no circumstances should they be trusted. Proceed at your own risk!!! And if you do add a link to their web site for monetary payment, you are taking a huge risk in losing respect and integrity of your own web site!

Permalink | Comments (12)

There are 12 comments

They contacted me too looking for paid text links. My site has nothing to do with web hosting and barely mentions it except to advertise my web host, SBI.

I wonder if they are after the PR? I always stipulate a nofollow tag which I believe is good practice as then the SEs will not penalise you for selling PR.
Comment by Rona on February 19th, 2009
Hey Rona,

I guess it’s not up to us to know what the heck they are up to! I just know that whatever it is, it ain’t good! LOL

Thank you for your comment! Good to know that the word is getting out about them!
Comment by debbie T on February 23rd, 2009
don’t trust them, it’s a scam
Comment by tab on April 15th, 2009
Received a similar email today (different name and text), but from the same fortitudehosting.com.

Found your blog while researching this “offer”.

Why would someone want to purchase advertising on just 1 page? Perhaps to build PR? From unrelated sites? Seems odd.
Comment by Don Stuart on May 19th, 2009
Hi,
Thank you for reporting this. I received the same email with a little different wording. My site has nothing to do with web hosting:

Message:

Hello,

My name is Nina Ashford and I’d like to purchase advertising on one of your web pages; I’d be able to pay you for the year, upfront and in full, online through PayPal.

I feel the type of advertisement I have in mind will work very well with the theme of your page.
You can contact me at nina@fortitudehosting.com for more details.

Hope to hear from you soon.

Kind regards,

Nina
Comment by Lea on July 1st, 2009
I literally got an email from them today, a guy called Chris. How does this scam work though? What if they did send the payment? Not sure how the scam would work. The links he sent me went to Universitys etc.
Comment by TheInfoPreneur on March 12th, 2010
From: Chris Walen
Sent: Tuesday, March 30, 2010 6:57 AM

Hello,

My name is Chris. I’d like to purchase advertising on one of your pages. The Page I’m most interested in is located here http://mywebsitesrealnamehere.com/ I’d be able to pay you for the year, upfront, and in full through PayPal.

You can contact me at chris@fortitudehosting for more details.

Thanks!
Chris Walen
Comment by Jay on March 30th, 2010
Thanks for the entertaining and informative blog.

At first, I was intrigued by the email since it specified an exact webpage, but my webpage is very specific to a category of the internet population, so I checked their website which seemed to be “hosting” which is unrelated.

Searching the internet, found your blog. I agree, for $40 or $75, there is no point risking my website for an unknown other website, which seems to be getting bad reviews if you google around for related info.

Thanks!
Comment by Joe on July 1st, 2010
I just found this blog today while researching the strange email offer I just received. Again, similar message, different name of sender. I wonder how many people fall for this? I am glad I didn’t.

Hi,

My name is Jennifer Wurwitz. I’d like to purchase advertising related to remote services on your home page here http://www.insertyourwebsitenamehere.com/ ; I’d be able to pay you for the year, upfront and in full through PayPal.

You can contact me at jennifer@fortitudehosting.com for more details.

Thank you for your time!

Cheers,
-Jenn
Comment by Evelyn on September 8th, 2010
Same thing here.

Hi,

My name is Jennifer Wurwitz. I’d like to purchase advertising related to travel and tourism on your page here http://bavarianinn.com/ ; I’d be able to pay you for the year, upfront and in full through PayPal.

You can contact me at jennifer@fortitudehosting.com for more details.

Thank you for your time!
-Jenn
Comment by Justin on October 18th, 2010
Same here:

Hi,

My name is Jennifer Wurwitz. I’d like to purchase advertising related to time management on your page here http://www.xxx.com ; I’d be able to pay you for the year, upfront and in full through PayPal.

You can contact me at jennifer@fortitudehosting.com for more details.

Let me know what you think,

-Jenn
Comment by steve on October 26th, 2010
Hi there – I’m joining your club after an email from the same people yesterday – Jeff Wharton (the name has to be a joke, right?!). Thanks for putting in all that time and doing the background work around this….J
Comment by john burns on April 17th, 2011