FTC, Google Go After Scammers 64
coondoggie notes that the Federal Trade Commission said it was going after three outfits that allegedly made robocalls to sell worthless credit-card interest-rate reduction programs for large up-front fees (as much as $1,495). And reader Cwix tips us that today Google filed a lawsuit against Pacific WebWorks and other unnamed defendants for allegedly using the company's name and logo to promote fraudulent work-at-home money-making schemes. "Kate Lister, author of Undress for Success — The Naked Truth about Making Money at Home, estimates that more than 95% of Google hits on the words 'work at home' are scams, link to scams, or other dead ends."
Work at home... (Score:2)
scam.
old news.
Re:Work at home... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's hardly enough to live on, but I did paid surveys for a couple of months until the novelty wore off and I realised I could do better things with my time.
I'd be sent a link to a survey on some household product (e.g. dishwasher powder) and asked about what I bought, how often I used it, whether I liked it. Then there'd be a new product (or just an idea), and they wanted my opinion on that. The survey took about 15-20 minutes to complete, and they'd send me £3, but they were so dull I got fed up and cancelled my account.
On forums a lot of people race to become "members" of this "panel" [pineconeresearch.co.uk] (they only accept new members occasionally) but I don't think it's worth the effort.
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Because it's only once or twice a month.
Presumably, you could find other survey companies, but at some point you may as well get a real job. UK minimum wage is £5.80/hr.
Re:Work at home... (Score:5, Interesting)
There are work at home jobs, and many are legit. Unfortunately, scammers have found that there are many many people who will pay lots of money for the convenience of some impossible task that pays pennies.
No, really?! (Score:2)
Say it isn't true. How ever could someone be so cruel as to scam people who just want to do minimal work, never leave the house, and yet still make thousands per week?
Actually, to be fair, I didn't think that many would be scams - I thought a bigger proportion would be money laundering exercises.
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What I find funny, is that the block quote could have come strait off of one of the scam sites. The book itself (from context of the quote) could very well be a scam.
The sites generally have quotes by the author of the program saying "all others are fake/dcams, use us", and the quote appears to say the same.
Re:No, really?! (Score:5, Funny)
"people who just want to do minimal work, never leave the house, and yet still make thousands per week?"
You've met our IT Consultants?
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Now let me tell you about Agile Development...
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I'm a gymnast, you insensitive clod. I'm agile enough already!
Consulting? (Score:1)
That reminds me of this [despair.com] item from despair.com
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I resemble that remark - or did, actually, but my wife wouldn't let me take that poster to work.
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Say it isn't true. How ever could someone be so cruel as to scam people who just want to do minimal work, never leave the house, and yet still make thousands per week?
Because running a work-at-home scam requires minimal work, you never have to leave the house, and you still make thousands per week.
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I tried to warn him but he was making $20/hr and didn't want to believe it could be a scam.
So is he getting along with his cell-mates ?
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But come on jittles, what really happened?
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Re:so, is Google going to stop running scam ads? (Score:4, Informative)
In addition to taking Pacific WebWorks (PWEB) to court, Google said it is continuing efforts to remove scam sites from its index. The company also said it would permanently disable Google AdWords accounts that provide a "poor or harmful" user experience whether or not they use Google's trademark illegally.
Sounds like they plan on trying to get rid of the scams from adwords.
Re:so, is Google going to stop running scam ads? (Score:4, Interesting)
The correct procedure would be to get rid of the "Adwords for Domains" program entirely.
There was a time when geeks found it abhorrent that people would buy up thousands of domain names just to fill a site with adverts and pollute search engine indexes. Then Google made an ad program specifically for people who do this, and suddenly it's not a problem any more.
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The company also said it would permanently disable Google AdWords accounts that provide a "poor or harmful" user experience whether or not they use Google's trademark illegally.
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If I see an advertisement on those Google Adwords or Adsense or whatever, I automatically think they're a scam. It's the same with any and all telemarketers (charities included!), spam email, and junk mail.
If they're not a scam and if they offer a decent service at a decent price, I will probably find them when I'm shopping for services that they offer - regardless if they advertise with Google or not.
How do I know if they're legit?
I search:
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I've never asked my buddy, Joe Shea, how much it costs to run american-reporter; I only see a discrete google ad, and yet he manages to find a little bit of quality.
Self-interest (Score:4, Interesting)
Google isn't going after scammers in general for the good of the public. From TFA:
They're going after someone who is threatening their name, trademark and reputation. You can bet that if it had read "Use Bing to make 1000s of Dollars", Google wouldn't be involved.
Re:Self-interest (Score:4, Funny)
...and Microsoft wouldn't take action against them because they'd double Bing's search traffic.
Re:Self-interest (Score:5, Insightful)
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That is what I had hoped for when I first read the summary. The article was a bit of a let-down.
I wonder if any Google employee has tried to use their "work on anything" time to do just that?
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They don't actually have "work on anything" time, or maybe they did, but they don't any longer. It is a myth at this point.
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Source: http://www.google.com/intl/en/jobs/lifeatgoogle/englife.html [google.com]
Any body working at google care to comment on it?
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It still exists, however it is up to the engineer to make use of it, and many do not. There are complaints from some that it is too hard to use 20% time now, but the vast majority of these cases are not because a manager or someone is trying to stop the engineer from using it, but because they just feel "too busy" to use it.
I've had an active 20% project for about 1/4 of the time I've been working there, and hope to start on a new one soon.
Scams (Score:2)
estimates that more than 95% of Google hits on the words 'work at home' are scams, link to scams, or other dead ends
If this is true, doesn't the FTC fraud department have it's job already done for it? If it were 5%, the fraud department would have to really work to find a scam, in this case, just click on a link, and viola, someone to prosecute.
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estimates that more than 95% of Google hits on the words 'work at home' are scams, link to scams, or other dead ends
If this is true, doesn't the FTC fraud department have it's job already done for it? If it were 5%, the fraud department would have to really work to find a scam, in this case, just click on a link, and viola, someone to prosecute.
And if only 5% of hits are genuine, it's such a small percentage that it'd be ok to just prosecute and convict all without any investigation. That'd save a ton of taxpayer money!
Webcam stripper? (Score:2, Informative)
"... Kate Lister, author of Undress for Success — The Naked Truth about Making Money at Home..."
Admit it, your first thought was "webcam stripper". Mine was :-)
The website at http://undress4success.com/ [undress4success.com] is actually quite interesting.
And, no, it ain't a webcam stripper :-)
Undress for success? (Score:3, Funny)
"Undress for Success — The Naked Truth about Making Money at Home"
Is the subtext here that the only way to make money working from home is as a webcam stripper?
Or merely that when you're on the phone to your working-from-home colleague, he may be naked?
Re:Undress for success? (Score:4, Funny)
Or merely that when you're on the phone to your working-from-home colleague, he may be naked?
Actually, it's that when you're on the phone to your working-from-home colleague, he's working concurrently as a webcam stripper. How concurrently? Don't ask. For the love of all that is holy, don't ask.
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I'd become a webcam stripper in a heart beat if anyone wanted to see my bloated saggy body.
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How do you shorten a line? (Score:2)
The solution in the movie was "draw a bigger line next to it". Well, the evil of "why do you care if you have nothing to hide" will be pushed aside by bigger tangible evil of these scammers.
[*] blah= iru kOdukaL, (meaning Two linesegments in Tamil), by K Balachandar.
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"Google Go"? (Score:1)
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What exactly can a programming language come after scammers in?
That makes no sense.
It makes no sense!
Oh right, you knew that.
threestarsinc.com (Score:2, Interesting)
I'll believe Google is serious about stopping fraud when they make it easier to report the hordes of affiliates of http://www.threestarsinc.com/ [threestarsinc.com] who use Gmail accounts to abuse the craigslist job boards. If you'll check this page: http://www.threestarsinc.biz/ [threestarsinc.biz] they spell out their business plan to use job seekers as a quality target for marketers.
While it may be legit on the the face of it, when combined with their pyramid-like rankings for job applicants who drive more traffic to their sites it h
Robocalls (Score:1, Offtopic)
I get a robocall from "Card Services" every few days. They never phone when I'm at home, so I can't tell them what I think of them. I also get robocalls offering me a new home security system, and vacations to various locations.
...laura
My scheme - not a scam (Score:1)
Advertising saying "Send me £5 and I will tell you the secret of making money". When then send you cash tell them the secret is to advertise saying "Send me £5 and I will tell you the secret of making money"
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What you are describing is essentially a pyramid scheme, it often works for the initial entrants but as the number of people involved in the scheme grows it becomes impossible to recruit enough suckers for the scheme to continue.
Only 95%? (Score:4, Funny)
Does this mean that 5% of the links are actual legitimate opportunities for me to work at home and earn thousands of dollars a week in my spare time?
*That* should be the headline here.
Are 5% of the penis enlargement ads legitimate, too??
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Does this mean that 5% of the links are actual legitimate opportunities for me to work at home and earn thousands of dollars a week in my spare time?
That seems to be the implied headline: "You can now feel safe to click on our advertisements! We've removed the illegitimate ones!" Of course, not really. Scammers make tons of money from those advertisements and will always have plenty of money and schemes to get more adds.
I used to do this (Score:4, Interesting)
I used to do this when I was a teenager. It was one of the three classic telemarketing schemes in Montreal (paper rolls for debit machines was next, listings in fake yellow page magazines is the other). Derog is what made me the most money though.
Telemarketing companies would pick up leads that contained a high level of people with debt across many high interest credit cards (regular/department store/etc) and offered them a low interest rate credit card where they can stuff all their debt on to, for the cost of thousands.
The trick to convincing them was:
"But sir, this is not really an out of pocket expense since the interest savings will pay for it."
Since most people on the lead sheets got into the position they are in because they were never good at budgeting to begin with, that line was the line that sealed the deal.
Of course, the caveat to this plan is that you've simply just got a new credit card, and freed up your others to spend more with and really fuck yourself over. So really, the scheme was akin to a sub prime mortgage on your DEBT.
Naturally, when you're sixteen and realize that you could make a hundreds if not a thousand in a week of part time work, the grand scale of what you're doing isn't obvious.
It used to be hard damn work to work-at-home scam (Score:1, Funny)
I love how the Internetz has allowed any lazy SOB to be a scammer. What happened to all the hard work you used to have to do in order to "work at home" scam people? Back in the day pre-Internetz, a college roommate of mine answered one of those "stuff envelopes from home" that used to appear in like every college newspaper want ads at the time. It cost like $20 up front or something like that to get the package. When the package arrived, it was basically an envelope with a sheet of paper that said somet
I got phoned at work by this scam yesterday (Score:1)
Yesterday I got robocalled by this scam at work - which, since I don't ever give out my work phone to a credit card company or bank, know to be bogus.
The FTC needs to shoot to kill the people who do this, and then give their lifeless corpses a fair trial.
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AAARGH they waste so much of my time, fax ink, electricity, text messages at 25cents a piece, with absolutely no thought or effort spent on their part, and returning the annoyance would just waste more of my time. At least pan handlers and muggers give you the courtesy to expend some effort getting money out of you.