After the Kickstarter data leak in 2014, spam for kickstarter project became common. The scoundrels just use the data from this breach for sending email spam. Some even have real companies and some are individuals offereing their services directly to the campaign starter and others are "hired" by more or less reputable PR/Marketing companies which in turn offer advertisment services to the campaign owner. Looking at the URL in the mails and following redirections, you see mostly the same chain of irresponsibility: Big E-Mail Marketing companies sending out the mail (e.g. SendGrid or SpamChimp) --> the spammer -> marketing company -> kickstarter -> Project Page. So normaly everything is traceable and in case of spam compains any serious company should immediately terminate their contract with the previous element in this chain. Okay, everything can raise a fake company in seconds, but resolute action will make the current campaign worthless and on the long run spamming as a whole. 

 

Normally when confronted, the project owners won't disclose the names of companies commissioned for promotion, effectively protecting the offender and not helping the victims. 

 

A company called Terrahelix started a new campaign for "the future of lawn care" and fell into this trap: 

 

But they gave a small piece of information: They bought a couple of "gigs" on Fiverr, a company I haven't heard of yet. Okay, I seldom run spam campaigns ;-) . Okay, on Fiverr you can buy services including spam errr advertisement: 

 

 

So looking at the mail again, this spam mail was a little bit different. There was no referral id in the link, so there is no trace back to the one . And the kickstarter owner cannot analyze the success of each campaign and even if the commissioned promoter did anything at all but taking the money. And even worse these people may hurt your campaign, product and your company. 

 

From what I heard, as soon as you start your project on kickstarter you will get a lot of promotion offers, you get a taste of spam yourself. Welcome to the kickstarter shark tank. 

 

"Killing your campaign" was inspired by currenly only commenter on kickstarter.