
Ask HN: Abusive-seeming legal threat from Semalt - jonweber
Hello HN.<p>I run AbuseIPDB, a free distributed IP threat analysis database that allows users to report abusive IPs (spammers, bruteforcers, etc) through an API, webform, or Fail2Ban integration. We have over 30,000 users and almost 50k IPs reported per day.<p>I received a legal letter today from Semalt, a company that is probably familiar to many of you as a shady SEO company. They&#x27;re mad because one of our users flagged one of their IPs on our site with the following comment:<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.abuseipdb.com&#x2F;check&#x2F;196.216.49.242<p>&quot;Bot that promotes semalt.com SEO through web log referrer click bait spam with fix-website-errors.com, keywords-monitoring-success.com and keywords-monitoring-your-success.com. Does not identify itself as a bot, nor does it follow robots.txt. Clickbait link includes your domain name to let the bot&#x27;s master know they got through. Primary site has form to gather domain names.&quot;<p>Semalt says this:<p>&quot;The above mentioned materials do not contain any truthful information, and you ignore our attempts to clarify the issues related to your abusive comments and articles. You choose to ignore us and continue spreading false information. Our company has never been involved into the distribution of referral spam.<p>On the contrary, we often suffer from fake referral traffic on our website. The Semalt company has no doubt that you have used the trademark of our company in your publications not by accident but on purpose hoping to attract customers (readers) by using the popular brand&#x2F;product name. [...]&quot;<p>Full legal letter is here, including all of the threats of suing for damages, invoking GDPR, etc etc. For what it&#x27;s worth, they didn&#x27;t even bother contacting us through the website before sending this.<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.scribd.com&#x2F;document&#x2F;381802760&#x2F;Abuseipdb-com-Abuse-Letter<p>Has anyone else crossed paths with these guys before? It it worth responding to or acting on?<p>Thanks for your input!
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geoprofi
Same here, we have one of the most authoritative blog posts on the topic of
referral spam and it, of course, mentions semalt who were one of the first to
use this tactic of "promotion" of their service:

[http://blog.analytics-toolkit.com/2015/guide-referrer-
spam-g...](http://blog.analytics-toolkit.com/2015/guide-referrer-spam-google-
analytics/)

We got the same letters, sent to our ISP, instead of us, and we are a legal
entity, easy to identify and contact in multiple ways. Legalese is shit, of
course, we will stand our ground for sure. Unfortunately, due to procedures by
our ISP we might need to temporarily remove a part of the content until the
issue is resolved.

~~~
johnshon12
Got the exact same email from them today. I removed it as I'm not a legal
expert and thought it looked authentic, but glad to know they don't really
have any legal power to do anything.

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anon715
I also received a very similar letter in an email. I had an article on my site
from several years ago about how to block referral spam, and Semalt was one of
the sites I listed. I've deleted the article but did not reply to the email.

I feel a bit bad that I deleted the article as everything in it was truthful
and helpful to people looking for that info. However, I don't want to get into
a legal fight (although that's probably unlikely).

The only thing I can think of that I could possibly be in trouble for legally
is that I called these sites referrer spam and ghost spam. However, so have a
thousand other sites and what they did really seems to fit the definition of
that exactly.

I read online that these sort of letters are supposed to be delivered by mail,
not electronically. Additionally, I wonder about the statute of limitations is
on this.

Anybody have any free, anonymous legal advice?

~~~
bhartzer
Calling the sites referrer spam and ghost spam is correct. It's spam, which is
illegal in some countries, and visitors did NOT come from Semalt.com to your
website. It's fake, and I'd continue to call it what it is: referral spam and
ghost spam.

Some even tracked down the Semalt botnet that was doing this referral spam and
ghost spam. So you're absolutely in the right by calling it what it is. What
semalt did was absolutely referral spam. They claim it wasn't them, but they
certainly profited from it.

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btravs
I received the same exact message from Semalt about an article I wrote back in
2014. I'm pretty sure this is a scare tactic since I can't find any reason for
them to "start legal proceedings", and the letter they sent is clearly copy
and pasted since one of the field wasn't updated from the last person they
messaged. Also, they have no reason to mention GDPR – it has nothing to do
with this situation.

Just in case, I contacted a lawyer – I'll fight it if it goes further since I
don't appreciate being bullied by a company like this, and nothing I said was
false.

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rob_n
We also recieved this letter from Semalt concerning a blog-article about
referral spam.

We contacted our lawyer and he said that the reasons mentioned in the letter
are rubbish. Our blog-article doesn't concern any trademark-violations and it
certainly has nothing to do with GDPR.

The only critical point might be, if we said something wrong about them. But
we have the facts and there are lots of other sites that say the same thing.
So we won't delete or edit our article and we'll see if they really go to
court and risk losing.

I hope some of you will do the same - that will make it easier for all of us!

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LynneHuysamen
Yes I received the same letter. I did a review on Semalt on my website sharing
my opinion which was not very flattering. Their letter said they are going to
sue me for damages from 2014 until now.... however I didn't even have my
domain purchased until 2015 and the review was obviously written even later
than that. I removed my review from my website because I don't want any drama
but I ignored their letter. They then sent the same letter to my domain
registrar and they emailed me.

A legal letter should be very precise but their letter could not even get
their dates right. On top of that it says to Sir/ Madam when my full name is
clearly shown on my website. I can't take that seriously. They cannot even
take the time to write my name?

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ghost101
I think Semalt sent the same letter to anyone who has mentioned their
wrongdoing or how to block it... I think most of them do not even want to
bother or any trouble with the company. Simply delete the article because it
was like big topic in 2014. Now because of GDPR, they are trying to abuse it
and cover all of their shits.... i don't even wanna bother with them.. I just
deleted the article..

~~~
jonweber
Does GDPR have anything to do with this? None of their PII is posted. GDPR
doesn't let you force anyone to delete anything about you from their site.

~~~
bhartzer
I don't think GDPR has anything to do with this. You're correct, none of their
PII is posted, and you didn't save any of their PII.

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marcusneto
I've been contacted too. I'm not planning on removing my article either. It
feels like a bluff. I find it odd that their first course of action is to
threaten legal action. Not exactly the way to win friends and influence
people. If they really wanted to get on the right side of this they would
acknowledge what they did and then approach people with an apology. Meh.

------
pelorousjack
I received this letter for my web site too, for an article that was published
before I bought the site. Since I didn't write the article and couldn't even
say if it was true or not, I just deleted it to avoid a possible fight.
However, I do believe that their claims have no teeth and it is just a scare
tactic. I emailed them back at their generic company address because they
didn't even leave a reply-to address in the contact form.

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bhartzer
I know several blogs and sites who have written about the semalt referral spam
back in 2014 that have gotten legal threats against them.

The letters claim trademark infringement. They own no trademark in the USA,
and there is one in pending status in their own country. Would claiming you
own a trademark (yet you don't officially own one yet) be an issue?

If you've written about how to block Semalt referrer spam, you're just
informing your readers about how to block referral spam (the domain doesn't
really matter). So that falls under fair use.

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JDriver
I've had exactly the same thing today in my spam box. I didn't open the
attachment, but I assume it's regarding a negative article I wrote.

Everything I wrote was the truth, and I can back up everything I said, so I'm
not concerned.

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Elephant94105
Same here. I think it's fair use, It's public service to fight spam. I don't
think a judge will side with their argument that we're trying to take
advantage of their great reputation :-).

Just like with any claim troll without merits, the best course of action is to
ignore them.

~~~
merviemilia
I received the same email and attachment. Talked with the local police and
they said it seems like a scam and told me to contact Finnish Communications
Regulatory Authority. So, I sent the email and PDF to them. I’m not taking any
of this.

