Short answer: Being mentioned in the news makes your business easier to find. Some people then use AI tools to look up your email address and send unsolicited offers, sometimes claiming to represent a news outlet. These messages are not connected to BrandPush.
Email addresses can often be discovered through public sources such as your website, social media profiles, online directories, or other pages indexed on the internet. People may monitor newly published articles, look up the businesses mentioned in those stories, and then reach out with marketing offers.
How third parties find business email addresses
AI tools can quickly scan the internet to locate contact information linked to a business. For example, AI platforms such as Google AI Overviews or ChatGPT can sometimes surface email addresses simply by searching for a business name and the word “contact”.
Google Search
ChatGPT
This process can be easily automated, so once an email address is found, automated systems can send large volumes of outreach emails.
How to recognize suspicious emails
Warning sign | What to look for |
Suspicious email domain | Sent from a free provider such as gmail.com, outlook.com or yahoo.com, or from an address that doesn't match the news outlet's official domain. Also check the reply-to address, which can differ from the sender. |
Unprofessional language | Unusual phrasing, poor grammar, or generic greetings such as “Hi dear”, “Dear valued customer”, “Respected sir/madam”, “Please respond urgently” or “Please do the needful”. |
Unexpected payment request | A claim that payment is required to keep your article live. Reputable news outlets do not send unsolicited payment demands like this. |
How to reduce unwanted emails
While it is not possible to eliminate unsolicited emails completely, you can reduce them with a few simple steps:
✅ Avoid publishing your email publicly on contact pages, blog posts, social media profiles or online directories. A contact form helps reduce automated scraping.
✅ Don't reply to suspicious emails. Responding can signal that your address is active and lead to more spam.
✅ Mark the email as spam with your provider's spam or phishing tools, so similar messages are filtered in future.
✅ Verify requests independently by contacting the organization through its official website.
If you receive a message claiming to represent BrandPush.co or any of our partnered news outlets and are unsure whether it is legitimate, you can contact our support team and we will help verify it. See also unexpected payment requests after your article is published.