Is academia.edu Safe?

This site has repeatedly come up in phish/spam sent to me, regarding a bogus citation that "tagged" me as a co-writer. This site has also appeared in scorecard spam on WOT and has engaged in a steady stream of unsolicited spam for more than five years. This site uses deceptive methods to place charges upon the unwary viewer's credit cards as well. See: ***** Untrustworthy.

A Zero star review is more appropriate for this annoying site. I keep getting spam / scam email from them saying I have been cited in numerous publications, which are all phony. I am not an academic and do not write academic material that would be read by academics. It is impossible to get them to stop sending this junk mail so I just direct it straight to the spam box.

This site, with which I have never had any connection, has been spamming me regularly informing me of supposed references to me in papers on that site - but it is clear from the spam message body text that the references are simply to my name, and are *very* unlikely indeed to be mentions of me at all, seeing that there is no earthly reason why I'd get mentions in the sort of papers that would be submitted to them, and that there are pleny of other Philip Goddards! So, this is spamming, pure and simple, with attempted deception in claiming in the subject line of each email that the references are to me, when in reality it is just other people with the same name. I wouldn't trust any organization at all, which behaves in this way.

This garbage site keeps emailing me, telling me that I've "been mentioned" in a paper, then asking for over $100 in order for me to see what it's talking about. I've never been published, there's no reason at all for me to be cited in a paper. Either it's a scam by trying to swindle me out of $100 to see otherwise public information, or it's a scam by *lying* about my name being in an article.

like to download a pdf but need gmail it a no from me. > see http://www.urlvoid.com/scan/academia.edu/ Safety Reputation 2/26 Domain 1st Registered ***** (18 years ago) Server Location Flag (IE) Ireland Safety Scan Report hpHosts Alert View more details... PhishTank Alert View more details...

http://www.urlvoid.com/scan/academia.edu/ academia.edu/ Safety Scan Report hpHosts ***** Alert PhishTank ***** Alert