Tuesday, Sep 23, 2014 at 09:49
Unfortunately, there are dozens of genuine market research and survey panels out there, that WILL pay you money for doing surveys.
The spammers and scammers try to fool you into believing they are genuine market researchers - but they're basically devious crooks who are often being chased by regulatory bodies - and the
police as
well.
The problem with these devious crooks (they're usually Russians, but not always), is that they have legitimately-registered businesses, and they often give you something that is worthless, for the money they have extracted from you.
Thus, they avoid CC chargebacks and get to keep the money - because if you try to get a refund on your CC, one of the primary reasons for demanding a CC refund, has to be, that you purchased an item and never received it.
Of course, there are online scammers that are just outright criminals and they are only interested in getting your CC details so they can strip your CC without giving you anything.
My missus does genuine surveys regularly, and these genuine companies regularly DO pay her a few bucks for her input.
The two companies she deals with are CoreData and Research Survey.
http://www.coredata.com.au/http://www.researchsurveyservice.com/
Genuine survey companies will have a list of clients and a precise outline of what they do on their webpage, along with a referrable background, with the ability to find records of them on regulatory sites.
The Better Business Bureau is a good website for checking on the bona-fides of American businesses.
http://www.bbb.org/council/bbb-scam-stopper/
Unfortunately, genuine survey companies will also use pop-up ads to ask if you want to be part of a survey.
However, these genuine pop-up ads are always small, always in the lower corners of the screen, and they're never intrusive.
If you get a pop-up that is intrusive (dead centre of the screen and with a pretty girls face and name attached) - and they have a "DON'T LEAVE THIS PAGE!" pop-up when you try to close the page, or hit the back button - then you can be sure you're being targetted by spammers and scammers and shonky viagra sellers.
You can also do a quick google of any persons name in pop-ups - and if they show up in complaints on forums or social pages - or if you can't find out any details on the person that match the name and face - then you can bet your bottom dollar they're scammers, they've stolen a pretty girls photo, and they're using a common, innocuous name to suck you in.
SCAMWATCH
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824045