Something Phishy this Way Comes: A Guide to Sponsorship Scams
SEPTEMBER 12, 2022
by Brooke Elverston Jordan
Your distant cousin - and his extraordinarily large inheritance - may have disappeared from your inbox, but scammers are still out there. Some of them are probably in your inbox right now. If you’re a YouTube content creator who’s just branching out into brand sponsorships, knowing how to tell fake offers from the real thing is a skill you need to master—both to avoid the scams and to avoid doing the online equivalent of trying to tug a fake mustache off an “imposter” only to discover that it’s . . . it’s really on there.
There are as many scams as there are phish in the sea. This guide will focus on YouTube scams, but while some of these examples may be specific to YouTube, most of these principles can be applied to any scam.
Some of the scams are going to start right on your channel. You know that “for business inquiries” address that you put on your about page? Scammers will pull that and send you an email. Thankfully, while scammers have figured out how to bypass Captcha, they haven’t quite got the hang of imitating a legitimate business. Emails from scammers have common traits that—alone or in groups—will let you know when to say to yourself, “There’s something phishy in this inbox.”
So, what do they have in common?
Words and Other Things
Bad grammar and clumsy diction are red flags. Behind any real company outreach, there is an employee who’s spent the last thirty minutes playing whack-a-mole with run-on sentences, dangling modifiers, and extraneous adverbs. Companies want to put their best foot forward when they contact you, so they’ll make sure their emails are word-perfect or close to it. A scammer, on the other hand, probably won’t. An illegitimate email might have clunky phrasing, omit punctuation, or just have an unprofessional tone. Any of these things should put your hackles up because it might indicate a scam. While some scams will use perfectly good grammar, there are companies out there who don’t feel that their emails need to measure up with the editor of The New York Times. Language is the easiest thing to catch, but only in conjunction with other factors does it indicate a trick.
Email Spoofing
Phishers are imposters, and they’re great at dressing their email addresses up like the real thing. You might get an email from an address with a legitimate brand’s name in it. But before you do anything, check the domain name. Email spoofing is a phisher’s favorite disguise. Even if the domain name includes the brand’s name, check it against the brand’s official email domain. If the domain is a variation of the real brand’s name—like @amazon.email.com instead of @amazon.com—don’t respond or open any of the links in that email. Free email accounts (Gmail, Outlook, Hotmail) are also red flags.
Links
When in doubt, don’t click. Whenever I see a link in an email from a stranger, I raise an eyebrow, skeptically. If you've got a funny feeling about a link in an email, there are a few steps you can take to make sure it’s legitimate. The first is to simply hover your mouse over the link. After a few seconds, a mini window should pop up and show you a preview of the site the link really leads to. You can also copy and paste the link into a free virus-checking website like VirusTotal or Sucuri SiteCheck. The last thing to watch out for are websites that ask you to enter your username and password, which hackers could use to gather your personal information and log into your account. Think you’ve nailed it? Take Google’s phishing quiz to see if you can spot the scams.
No Social Media Presence
Your first instinct upon receiving a message from an unknown brand might be to check out their social media accounts. If the brand is a front for scammers, its presence will probably be shoddy or nonexistent. Fraudulent businesses tend to avoid social media because they don’t want people they’ve ripped off to rip them apart in the comments section. Scammers keep a low profile or have an account that’s obviously a little off; fake followers, fake posts, or poor feed quality can all indicate that a brand isn’t the real deal (ergo neither is the one they’re offering you). But this is another thing that has to be weighed against other factors. A lot of perfectly legitimate businesses have a poor social media presence, and some scams actually rely on tricking people into posting photos with their products to lend them legitimacy.
DMs
Scammers don’t just use social media as a fake online storefront; they also use it for outreach. Language conventions aren’t as strict on social media as they are on email threads, so scammers can make a few errors without arousing suspicion. Also, there’s no spam filter for your DM inbox, which is handy for people who would otherwise be filtered out if they tried to contact you. However, some legitimate businesses do prefer to contact creators via their social media accounts, so you can’t delete every DM business offer by default. Our advice is that if you receive a DM with a business offer, ask to move the conversation to your email inbox immediately or direct whoever messaged you to your agent’s social media account. Either option will help you separate real businesses from scams, and once the conversation is in your inbox you can apply the rest of the rules listed in this article to figure out if the offer is legit.
No Contract, or a Shady Contract
Any agreement you reach with a brand should be sealed with a contract. It’s standard practice for the brand to provide you, the creator, with a drafted contract. If you’re sent a contract, read it carefully, or give it to your lawyer or agent to review. You want to make sure your potential business partner isn’t trying to take advantage of you, and that starts by looking over the contract with someone who has experience and expertise. A caveat: a business that sends you a contract with inequitable terms isn’t necessarily scamming you, but it’s still worth considering whether or not you want to do business with them.
Specific YouTube Hooks
So far, we’ve mostly talked about tactics that a scammer could use on anyone. But what makes YouTube scammers dangerous is that they know which opportunities and deals new content creators are looking for, and they imitate those opportunities so well they can fool professionals who’ve been in the industry for years. Just look at this Opera Software Scam, or this scam targeting Nikon photographers, to see how a clever scammer can get past your guard. To avoid these types of scams. your first step should be to check the domain name. However, some brands work with agencies that do their outreach for them. To make sure you’re not blowing off a legitimate offer from an agency, you’ll need to check if you’re receiving an email from either the real domain of the brand, or the real domain of their agency.
Ambassadorships and Free Stuff
As a new influencer, an ambassadorship or a product sponsorship can add that stamp of legitimacy that says, “I’m making content that’s so good I’m being paid for it.” Scammers know that, so they’ll reach out with unfair deals, hoping that you’ll accept their terms in exchange for ‘prestige.’ They might offer you ambassadorship right away and then add on some minor fees you’ll have to foot yourself, like buying their products at a discount and promising they’ll reimburse you for them (they won’t). They may even offer them for free and then ask that you pay for shipping. . . and then not send the product.
One Solution: Talent Management
We see scams on a daily basis. Creators message us to ask if messages are real, and companies email us with the scams themselves. We’ve been lucky, in a way, to acquire in-depth knowledge about phishing techniques, because we can use that knowledge to offer a layer of protection to our clients and community.
The early stages of your career are exciting: you can define your voice, expand your channel, and reshape your message more easily than bigger, established channels. Don’t let scammers negate those benefits by using your lack of experience against you. Working with a talent management agency can give you the best of both worlds. You retain your creative freedom and adaptability, and you gain the expertise of an industry professional who can spot fake offers. Agencies can do more than just spot scams - They source, negotiate, and manage sponsorships, lead revenue stream and brand development, manage merchandising, and more.
Whatever you choose to do, you’ve now completed a crash course in online scam spotting. The next time a phisher sails into your inbox and drops a line, you can ship them away and sign a contract with a real brand. If you want to learn more about navigating the world of content creation, check out the rest of our articles, or get in touch via the “Contact Us” page on our website.