A warning to Flytonic theme users

[nfint12]

Hi all,

Just received this email through the contact form on one of the websites I run, IP used to send it was 181.177.111.205.

===

From: Amarnath <thomas@flytonic.com>

Subject: Available now Link Inserts From our own Private Network

Message Body:
We have recently acquired ownership of flytonic.com with all interlectual proerty assets and client list.

With over two hundred thousand active installations of our themes and plugins we are now preparing a major update to our product line.

Once the users have deployed the new payload we will have the ability to add your links to any of the sites as soon as the update is performed, we wish to be respectful to our clientbase and will only be adding links to content and no site wide links.

Links will be available following the SAPE model and rented monthly depending on metrics.

Please let us know if you are interested and we will get back to you with the site database/metrics.

Sincerely

Amarnath "Thomas" Singh
Owner Flytonic LLC

thomas@flytonic.com

===

While it is true that anyone could pretend to be emailing from a certain company, I did see the Flytonic business was recently listed for sale on Flippa, and as of late there have been some new "SEO services" marketed on their FB page.

My recommendation would be to keep an eye on your external links, and possibly refrain from updating the theme or if you do get someone to look through the code.

Can't see sites that avail of this service lasting very long in the SERPs.

You can see quite a few websites have been contact thus far; https://cleantalk.org/blacklists/thomas@flytonic.com


Edit; after some more research the senders name matches the sellers name on Flippa; http://web.archive.org/web/201911110...es-and-plugins.


Strange

[Sherlock]

just look to header of the email, faking email sender is easy, but you will see it in the header

[nfint12]

just look to header of the email, faking email sender is easy, but you will see it in the header

It was sent through the contact form, so no headers.

[rknuppel]

FYI I received this email as well. When trying to respond the email address came back "undeliverable". Not sure what's going on.

[allfreechips]

If true I would locate the code that adds links and kill it, was that a paid theme or free?

[MJM]

This is really concerning news, we use flytonic for CTA"s because of the geotargeting component - I knew the original developer a bit (Thomas Calkin) who recently sold it to someone who doesn't speak very good english, they are doing a lot of spam content and spam emails for crappy SEO services, finally getting the push I need to switchover now I guess, was a long time coming anyways - but they are the only brand review/listing system that has Geotargeting built in, that I know of.

[Former Member 14]

was that a paid theme or free?

Flytronic are paid themes.
If this turns out to genuine, I'll just dump the theme. Screw having paid money for a theme, and the have the new owners inject links...

Affiliates using Flytronic should dump them, if this is genuine. What a sneaky thing to do

[MMM]

Indeed was wondering about all those SEO service emails was getting from them.
Also tried to contact for another issue i had and got no reply.
My guess it is genuine. Wonder how to prevent it if/when it happens.

[wolfie]

This is what I got in the mail today from flytonic support: (fixed green letters)

Spoofed Emails to defame our brand name

Dear Customer,

We have noticed that some spoofed emails were sent to our customers and prospective clients impersonating Flytonic representative. Please note that origination of such emails are fake and just ignore it or report to our support team.

We have verified our security system and have not observed any security breach in the system but emails were sent from external sources on which we don't have much control. Customers were contacted via "contact us" page of respective website which is a public information.

We assure that we will keep providing our best services and adding values to your business.

Thank you for your trust and commitment. Please contact our support team for any question.

Thanks,
Flytonic Team

[MMM]

Either that or they understood they were exposed. Due to the fact that it's not Tom anymore, need to pay attention.

[wolfie]

Yes, I agree fully. Check your links, people!

[nfint12]

I thought they might reply as above, whether they are innocent or not.

The best thing you can do is either switch theme or if you intend on keeping flytonic, use a link checker like https://wordpress.org/plugins/broken-link-checker/ to monitor your external links (doesn't just look at broken ones).


Hopefully more theme owners are made aware of this, might be worth posting on AFG if anyone has an account there.

[baldidiot]

This is super weird. I'd like to think it's more reputation sabotage than the new flytonic owners actual plan - surely no affiliate would leave their site with third party links being injected so the link selling would be full of dead links very quickly.

Didn't know Tom had sold btw. Anyone know who to or when?

We don't really use flytonic any more but have a few old sites kicking around that have it.

[allaboutthebets]

Deffo reputation sabotage. I emailed him straight away and said so your looking to add links to peoples sites without them knowing. He replied straight away on the proper email saying it wasnt them. The email to us come through a contact form

[MJM]

That’s semi-good news. But, this also lines up with a clear shift in company direction there - they are pushing spam
seo services daily for weeks now.

I mean look at this post in the Flytonic blog:

https://www.flytonic.com/wordpress-experts/

I remain skeptical.

[universal4]

That’s semi-good news. But, this also lines up with a clear shift in company direction there - they are pushing spam
seo services daily for weeks now.

I mean look at this post in the Flytonic blog:

https://www.flytonic.com/wordpress-experts/

I remain skeptical.

Certainly a large change from the content writing of other pages on the flytonic website with the way that page is written...the blog pages on their site took a shift at some point early this year, and even the writing style as well as grammar has changed.

I agree that those who use the themes should monitor the link situation, and hopefully the new ownership administration would never consider such a link scheme.

I also wonder if the entire customer base will now be flooded with "seo marketing and optimization" offers.

Rick
Universal4

[MJM]

That's already happened for awhile now Universal. Emails at least weekly about content writing, link building, etc type services - and then you see the example I mentioned posting content that reads like jibberish and is clearly poorly spun. Something is way off here and has been for awhile.

I'm a fan of the product - but anytime ownership changes hands silently and then changes drastically it's cause for a pause. I'm exploring other options now, in my case I don't use the themes but I do use the review plugin for CTA"s and geotargeting. I am not finding a clear and simple replacement for that - if anyone knows of anything, holler.

[LowFlyingBird]

Damn that's crazy not so funny April fools day joke.

[MJM]

If true I would locate the code that adds links and kill it, was that a paid theme or free?

How exactly would one do this?

[allfreechips]

Well most likely a database entry or something adding to pages you can track down.. nothing is just magically added...

Really seems like something they wouldnt really be able to do, ie if thats possible they could also just change all your aff links