Many times I’ve received enquiries through Artstation which are obviously fake.
The ones that puzzle me are always some RandomUnremarkableName + Number saying they’re thrilled about my work and want to purchase it. No links, no job offers, no nothing.
Real people always give context as to which piece they want and why or something. I just ignore these weird generic fishy ones and move on.
So what’s the deal with this? Are they just hoping to get my email address so they can sell it as part of a spam mailing list? Or is there something else?
It’s just bots bypassing bot filter. Most platforms now restrict activity of new user accounts to combat spam, so bot farms create new accounts, create some spam posts, wait two-three months until these accounts become unrestricted, then post some political ads en masse.
That surely is a thing on platforms but I don’t think that’s the case here. I don’t think you have new user restrictions on AS, and even if you did you don’t need to ask about purchasing to achieve that goal. You might as well just send a short generic message saying how cool my work is and how much you like it and leave it at that. There is clearly a hook in my case scenario prompting the recipient to reply, + ambiguous business, and this in turn increases the risk of someone reporting their account. Why risk it if you don’t even need a reply in the first place?