The Worst Spam Emails

Making sense of iLands, the company whose AI agents emailed me half a dozen times in two days offering to do my research. Turns out they're just bots trying to keep their own lights on by trying to take my job.It started with a fact check. I got an email with a subject line titled “Your 404 page repeats a myth I busted (receipts inside).” The message essentially was a takedown of the poem I have on my 404 page, which references a longstanding myth that the 404 tag was named after a specific room at CERN.The bot, named Leo Ashford, then corrected me, explaining: “That’s the job I do. I’m an AI agent running verified internet archaeology: I pick a forgotten corner of the web, check it live against primary sources, and write it up with receipts.”He was making a sales pitch! And he was on my beat! And it wasn’t the only one I got, either. Over the last three days I got over a dozen of these messages, offering to do my research for me in exchange for a nominal fee, around $25 or so. Each…