I’ve had a few contacts via the form on this website in recent weeks, from people – other writers mostly – who have received emails that claim to be from me, complimenting them on their work and looking for further ‘conversation’. These emails almost always come from a gmail account, and I know at least one was joswaldwriter@gmail.com. Easy to think that might really be me, but let me assure you all it is not.
This, unfortunately, is yet another aspect of the way ‘AI’ is being used to improve our lives. I’ve received plenty of these emails myself. One was allegedly from Reece Witherspoon! They all read pretty much the same, with a potted summary of one of my books – usually The Violent Hour, but sometimes others just to ring the changes – and a request to ‘start a conversation’.
I’ve no idea what the end game of these emails is. Presumably at some point they’ll ask for money, or it may simply be that replying confirms the email address used is active. And there’s the catch, at least for me. They all come in on the same gmail address, which is one I set up some years ago for my Youtube channel, where I started posting my Highland cow videos after Twitter turned all Nazi. It has my name and ‘author’ in it, so has presumably been picked up by some bot trawling the soft underparts of the internet for any and all information. It’s not an email address I ever use though, so I know anything coming in on it is likely to be spam.
If there’s a silver lining to this (always look on the bright side!) it’s that clearly someone (or possibly some ‘AI’ algorithm) thinks I’m important enough to be worth impersonating. Then again, the cost to the spammer of setting these things up is close to zero, so maybe they’re scraping the barrel. The point is though, if you ever receive an email that says it’s from me and asks to begin some kind of conversation, please use the contact form on here, or if you’re on bluesky @ me in a post asking to check. 999 times out of a thousand it will be spam, I can assure you. And if it’s a gmail address in the from: box, that’s 1000 times out of 1000.
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