WARNING about Free web site offer

$20 a month to host a website? Seems much too high for standard web hosting. I wonder what else you get for that price.

A free web site designed for you... :-)

We just got the same email earlier this morning from "Christina Williams" at volunteersmail.com (which in and of itself sounds more than a little fishy. If she's with donorcomplete.com, why is she saying to reply to a volunteersmail.com address?).

I did a Google check of donorcomplete.com, and came up with very few hits, other than links to pages at their website. That's also a little suspicious.

I have advised the recipient of the message to move it to her spam folder and block any future email messages from this address.

Barry Williams

I received the same initial pitch from "Christina".  After I replied I received the response below:

Some info about me...I am in San Diego and have been part of the volunteer team at DonorComplete for the past several years. DonorComplete is a social enterprise powered by a team of dedicated volunteers and IT staff.

At DonorComplete, you can build a new professional website with online fundraising in minutes with no tech skills needed. DonorComplete includes tools to easily manage the site, online fundraising, custom forms for events/members/volunteers/etc., donor management, web hosting, and live support. The monthly service ranges from $3-$9 per month depending on the term you select. There are no other costs.

Most questions can be answered on our website but feel free to reply if you have more! You can text me using the number below if that is more convenient. We also have Live Chat Monday-Friday 10:00 AM -6:00 PM EST.

Best Regards,

Christina Williams


[Admin: Use this service as your own risk...!]

We received a similar email signed Julie Myers but showing from Christina Williams <christina.williams@volunteersmail(dot)com

Subject: I have a question about volunteering
Date: Sun, 16 Sep 2018 18:39:03 -0400
From: Christina Williams <christina.williams@volunteersmail(dot)com

I volunteer some of my time to help nonprofits with their websites. I worked in IT for 20 years and was also a professional webmaster. I've helped a lot organizations already. Do you have any interest in getting a new custom website with online fundraising? I just helped a veteran's organization and their site is really nice now. I worked with a children's group before that and also helped them with professional online donations.

Best,

Julie Meyers
Nonprofit Volunteer

This is my address if you need to mail me:
855 South Main St Ste K:283 Fallbrook
California 92028. I volunteer with
DonorComplete so please reply if
you don't want me to contact you again.
937210

We're in the process of filing an abuse complaint with the volunteermail.com registrar, Namecheap. While researching information to provide in the complaint, I uncovered what appears to be something of a rabbit hole.

The address included in our email in in Fallbrook, CA, where DonorComplete.com is registered as operating. DonorComplete(dot)com is a property of Focus Point Media, Inc. Focus Point Media, Inc. does business as CharityAdvantage. Both Focus Point Media and CharityAdvantage also operate out of Fallbrook. There are at least 4 domains associated with Focus Point Media/CharityAdvantage:

• donorcomplete(dot)com (quasi-clone of charityadvantage(dot)com)
• focuspointmedia(dot)com (loads with a 500 Internal Server Error)
• charityadvantage(dot)com (domain registered in 2001; quasi-clone of donorcomplete(dot)com)
• discountchurchwebsites(dot)com (loads with a full screen modal directing visitors to charityadvantage(dot)com)

CharityAdvantage seems to be a little better known than DonorComplete, but not by much from what I can tell.

volunteersmail(dot)com is associated with volunteersmail(dot)net. Both show up in search results for volunteersmail(dot)com with a result title of "IIS Windows Sever". Attempting to load either site results in a 403 forbidden error. info@volunteersmail(dot)com has been blacklisted as being used in a 419 scam at https://joewein(dot)net/dbl-update/2018-08/2018-08-17(dot)htm with another domain, rebthomas(dot)net (defunct), associated with the body text of this email separately blocked at https://joewein(dot)net/bl-log/2015-04/bl-log-2015-04-30(dot)htm for spam. The IP address for volunteersmail(dot)com has been logged at Project Honey Pot with similar email subjects sent, but is not yet flagged: https://www.projecthoneypot(dot)org/ip_64(dot)71(dot)77(dot)28 In addition, julie.myers@volunteersmail(dot)net has been flagged for spam several times recently by Peter Hansteen's bdsly(dot)net's "traplist".

The text of the email appeared in a Wikipedia discussion thread warning of a "nonprofit confidence trick" at https://en(dot)wikipedia(dot)org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Computing/2016_January_15#Nonprofit_confidence_trick

More interestingly, the body text of this email has appeared several times in mailing list spam over the last few years with no mention of the company/companies associated. The subject in the forum posts has been "I have a volunteer question" instead of the subject we received, "I have a question about volunteering", but the body text is identical. The email addresses associated with the forum spam are predominantly gmail addresses, with the exception of the aforementioned rebecca@rebthomas(dot)net; that email address was used twice, while each of the gmail addresses was only used once. I found the exact text on the following mailing lists:

• https://lists(dot)freebsd(dot)org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/2015-May/265646(dot)html - May 8, 2015
• https://lists(dot)openstreetmap(dot)org/pipermail/mailman/2016-June/001173(dot)html - June 16, 2016
• https://marc(dot)info/?l=konq-bugs&m=143037510230210&w=2 - March 30, 2015
• https://mail(dot)kde(dot)org/pipermail/kde-www/2015-August/006269(dot)html - August 27, 2015
• https://lists(dot)arabeyes(dot)org/archives/admin/2015/December/msg00000(dot)html - December 8, 2015

Note that all of the above mailing lists are for free, open source software projects, many of which - if not all - are backed by nonprofit organizations, with the exception of marc(dot)info which is an archive of several hundred mailing lists. In each of the above instances, a signature of Outreach Volunteer was used while Nonprofit Volunteer was used in the email we received. Like our "Julie Myers", Rebecca Thomas of rebecca@rebthomas(dot)net included a 6 digit string of numbers at the end of her message, 301683 in one instance and 269035 in another; no other posts included such a number that I can tell.

While there's no direct correlation between the emails from christinawilliams@volunteersmail(dot)com and the mailing list spam, the overall evidence indicates that this is an ongoing spam campaign. CharityAdvantage has popped up in several forum threads on TechSoup over the years, including this thread where someone says they got repeated emails after requesting to be removed from the CharityAdvantage list: http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/community/f/20/t/40373.aspx The sum of the above evidence indicates its a sketchy company with sketchy marketing practices.

Very thorough job of digging, and thanks for doing that!

Appreciate everyone's information about donorcomplete.com. On Sept 3, 2018, I received the same "Christina Williams" e-mail cited by others; yesterday (Nov 7) I received a version from "Elizabeth Russell":

I volunteer helping nonprofit organizations with their websites and have a background as a certified webmaster. Do you have any need for a new custom website also built for mobile and online giving at no cost? I would be happy to send you a link to samples. I can also look at your current site and see where improvements can be made. Please let me know how I can help! 
Thanks, 
Elizabeth Russell 
Nonprofit Volunteer

The FAQ section at donorcomplete.com is full of words signifying nothing, and their "Portfolio" page appears not to list a single actual client—just mockup sites of "nonprofits" that don't show up in a Google search. Even worse, in my opinion, is that the website implies that some of the biggest nonprofits in the country, including United Way, Habitat for Humanity, the Salvation Army and the America Red Cross, use donorcomplete. One of these even says, "Thousands of Nonprofits Use DonorComplete," followed by the list of reputable NGOs.

One other red flag: Though they claim to accept donations, all they do (according to their donations management FAQ), is link to Paypal. My conclusion: Utter scam.