I received this unsolicited email a few days ago.

I develop a data wrangling tool, Easy Data Transform. It not really a ‘data extraction service’. Also, they are implying that they will put you in the top 5 for whatever category you want. If you pay, presumably. Sounds sketchy. I decided to email them back, to find out a bit more.

I got a long reply. But the key bits are:

So basically ‘Top 5’ is actually ‘Top 5 most willing to pay’. Ugh. I feel dirty just reading the email.

Bear this in mind next time you see a ‘Top X of Y’ article. They may not all be pay-to-play. But I suspect a lot of them are.