Many people have today had an email from someone calling themselves Mike Welding, enquiring after puppies.

It's been a flood, across all breeds, so the consensus is that someone has hacked a list of ABS or Champdog breeders, or a database withing the KC. There is no link, so it is unlikely to be connected to any kind of virus or malware. The email address given is likely to be a hacked one for the spammer's convenience.

Every breed has been targetted.... list too long to actually mention.

Don't respond - there is no point. Not yet known why these emails have been sent out, but one possible reason might be the scammers who advertise non-existent puppies on all the sales pages, might be wanting to harvest details for identity theft.

I've had 3 of these in one day....all worded the same but signed a different name...one from Mike welding..one from Alan fleming and another from Sam Lino.....going by the contact name they called me I think it's through Champdogs

>going by the contact name they called me I think it's through Champdogs

People not on Champdogs have been targetted as well, so it may be some kind of database held elsewhere, with the KC such as the ABS.

I had one last year from someone called Alan Flemming so it looks like the same set up.

I've had one from Mike Welding - addressed to me by just my surname! No mention of my breed.  Thank you for posting, I will not reply

I had one from Mike Wilding last Sunday...it mentioned my breed and was addressed to me by my Surname.

I thought it was an odd email address to reply to, **********

> Mike Welding

Yes I've had one from him as well. He mentioned my breed but what set my alarm bells ringing was the fact that he addressed the email to one of my dogs lol. I've had a lot of emails recently from my Champdog page (more in the last couple of months than I have had in yrs)

I had one from him. Fool that I am, I responded .

Hacking suggests a breach of security but if a breeder's email is listed on any internet site like CD, then it can be harvested by the software used by scammers/spammers. I have received this email and have had others in the past - the only way to avoid receiving them is to never list your email address anywhere on the internet but since this is not practicable in the real world, we just have to be on our guards & don't respond to emails which sound dodgy (as this one does)

Thanks for that! I have got one from Mike Welding sitting in my inbox, enquiring about Papillon puppies. As I pretty much never have, or will, have any pups available (litters born are too small to have anything spare) I was going to respond and say sorry, I can't help -just had not got round to it yet. The mail DOES sound genuine, there was nothing ringing warning bells at all. In fact here is a copy and paste:

Hi Marianne,

My name is Mike and I am extremely passionate about the Papillon breed. After researches and a long reflexion with the family, we have decided to go ahead and buy a puppy coming from a great breeder as we want a healthy pup who has been raised with love and care.

Please let me know if you do have any litter currently or in the near future; I would love to hear from you and hopefully we can then see from there.

Happy New Year!

Mike Welding

Just as with most of these scams, always check the spelling, and the English used ('a long reflection with the family')!!!   You'll almost always find something that's off about these unsolicited enquiries.

What I'd like to know is assuming he manages to get a collection of puppies of various breeds, what then??   Sell them on for a bigger sum or money?   God forbid, bait for fighting dogs?

> xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">My name is Mike and I am extremely passionate about the Papillon breed. After researches and a long reflexion with the family, we have decided to go ahead and buy a puppy coming from a great breeder as we want a healthy pup who has been raised with love and care.<br /><br />Please let me know if you do have any litter currently or in the near future; I would love to hear from you and hopefully we can then see from there.<br /><br />Happy New Year!<br /><br />Mike Welding

That is exactly the same wording as he sent me (apart from the breed and who he addressed it to) I was tempted to reply in woofs as he addressed it to one of my dogs lol!

I obviously didn't get one of these emails as I'm not a breeder, but like MamaBas has said, the English is a bit off. It was the word 'researches' that I noticed, wasn't quite correct in the context of the sentence. But then, if I had received this emails along with a number of other puppy enquiries, I dont think I would have I would have noticed anything amiss really, would have thought a typo.

I wonder what it's all about.

The usual scam mails I get are far, far worse and very obvious. This one even managed to spell the breed which even many genuine (or non-scam) enquirers don't manage to do.

The link to the poker website was a big give away for me plus the slightly weird English and addressing me by my surname (no firstname or title). I'm not sure there is any intention to acquire dogs by this scammer/spammer - more likely the intention is to drive more traffic to the poker website or some kind of identity fiddle, who knows?

JaneS if it was the same as mine it was not a link to a poker website but simply an e-mail address, which could have meant somebody using work email.

I'm sure it was the same as yours - the email address raised alarm bells for me but appreciate not everyone is as cynical as me.

There is really no need to panic though - if anyone replied to the email all they have done is confirmed that their email address is live and active, nothing more.

Poor English doesn't alarm me as I talk to lots of people with whom English is their second or even third language. Sometimes if they haven't got their friend or family member at hand to help translate, the messages can be almost unreadable. 

UPDATE. No idea if this is a coincidence or not, but would like to hear if anyone has experienced the same as me. Yesterday and today I have been literally bombarded with emails including attachments, with viruses. I got over 200 yesterday and a similar amount today. I Googled it and articles dated yesterday stated that small businesses have been targeted (guess some people would assume that any dog breeder with a website could be considered a small business) and the virus the attachments include is one that will try to gain access to your online banking. I don't think it's a scam, several websites mentioned it and certainly all the e-mails I received did have attachments. Thankfully I did not open any, I have Norton 360 installed and have deleted the mails, compacted my inbox , and run virus and malware scans so no harm, done -just a lot of wasted time.

Not had any recently but have in the past. Any emails I get that I do not know (and especially ones with attachments ) get deleted and blocked.

Ironic when not more than a week ago we were being berated for not replying to ALL enquiries.

> xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">Ironic when not more than a week ago we were being berated for not replying to ALL enquiries.

I was not referring to puppy enquiries, nor I suspect was Goldmali.  I was in fact referring to emails with attachments from dubious sources which not only gave no mention of puppies but in my case claimed to have queries about invoices etc. 

Yes these were all non-dog related with "invoices".

> Ironic when not more than a week ago we were being berated for not replying to ALL enquiries.

Not really - did you get one of these emails from Mike Welding? I've seen loads of them via other people, and they all came across as a slightly iffy, but a much better worded, enquiry than most people get on a daily basis. Yes there were a few mis-spellings and the syntax was off, but way above the "How Much?" or "I need a puppy next week, have you got one?" that people usually seem to get. A great many people DID take time and trouble to respond.

>A great many people DID take time and trouble to respond.

Yes I know, I was one of them!

Same here, I replied too, thought I had better seeing as he had taken the time and trouble to write something more than 'how much' and the previous thread on here..oops. I also mentioned in the reply, that although I couldnt help him this time, that he might make a better impression with approaching breeders if he just double checked his spelling and perhaps his email address might give the wrong impression!! Ha ha doh!

I'll close this now as I think most people are aware that they now need to be cautious when it comes to all email and especially those that come with attachments (like the invoice ones which have been doing the rounds for ages). Of course we should all try to be polite and respond to genuine puppy enquiries where possible but at the same time we need to be aware that not all emails are genuine and recognising the subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) signs of non-genuine emails can help protect us and our computers. Up to date anti-virus and anti-malware software should also be run regularly, especially if you have received an email from someone you don't know with an attachment and have opened the attachment.