What are website backlinks and should I be concerned?

[Erica]

I just received this email from my contact page on my website. I am still learning all this. What is it and should I be concerned? I am not responding to the email.

I send spam backlinks to your website and now I request that you order my gigs to remove them. If you do not order, I send more spam backlinks to destroy your site. You understand me? Please order now from **link** and let's be friends. Friend, you need to learn to support each other. $100 is nothing to you but I need feed family. Thank you for understanding

[D.J.]

That sounds like the threatening emails I get that I usually delete. Don’t click any links. And wait to see if anyone else has more details.

[Erica]

Normally I don't, but this was sent to me as a message directly from my contact form on my website so it didn't send up a red flag at first glance.

[D.J.]

I’m no expert. I’ve never had anything like that outside of normal email. It does sound like the nutter trying it on.

[D.J.]

Ok. Danny works in IT. He says check your website and see if anything has changed. Has the person managed to upload anything to it or does it look the same as you last left it? It’s usually idle threats of things that are vaguely possible. If nothing has changed ignore it.

[Theodore]

D.J. wrote: "Ok. Danny works in IT. He says check your website and see if anything has changed. Has the person managed to upload anything to it or does it look the same as you last left it? It’s usually idle th..."
Put your Webmaster on the case. He or she should have your site locked to prevent this. If anything's been disturbed, he or she will clear it and reset the security.

[Erica]

Thanks D.J. :) Changed my password, nothing changed, no new admins, no strange plugins. Feeling better about it now. I did learn a lot in the past hour about what backlinks are. Basically, they would link my website to negative rated websites to screw up my search engine optimization. You can disable bad links for free. Looking them up is a different story. Most places want to you pay to see all your backlinks.

[Carmel]

If I had a superpower, I would rid the world of this kind of malicious junk, so the rest of us could live in peace.

[Carole]

Amen, Carmel

[Anna]

Ditto.

[Judy]

Erica wrote: "Thanks D.J. :) Changed my password, nothing changed, no new admins, no strange plugins. Feeling better about it now. I did learn a lot in the past hour about what backlinks are. Basically, they wou..."

Wow, there are some bad people out there