Spam from support@twitter.com!! Viagra Spammer on the way

Just received a strange sounding e-mail from support@twitter.com (screen shot) with the title Undelivered Message 22-318.

The screen shot looks like this



The problem is that the real link for this mysterious delayed message doesn't lead you to your Twitter account!



Be aware of E-Mails coming from support@twitter.com - They are not really from Twitter.

In Twitter they talk that if you click through to the Reported Attack Page you might get a visit from malicious software, trojans or a Viagra website will be displayed!

UPDATE: On 29th April 2010 i got a second email from support@twitter.com - with a slightly different message (You have 3 unread messages) which means you should take care - it's not over yet (the redirected URL changed, too!).

Is Hubze a Scam? Fishy, Fishy or How to build a big list fast!

On 5th April it was time to listen again to a webinar of founder and CEO David Foster of Hubze.

Most of the points mentioned in my previous post about a possible Hubze-Scam or the new Hype in Social media turned out to become reality.
I'm wondering what you are thinking about his message and the e-mails they send us in the last week.

New customized Facebook Fan Page-Application

First, the affiliate program for their new customized Facebook Fan Page-Application is only available for you if you BUY the Facebook Fan Page Application. Referrals who signed up under your Hubze Card are not reflected as your referrals for this Facebook affiliate program.

He said, it might be perhaps connected in the future when they have finished their Hubze Card. I can only say in this case they could have linked it up directly with your username which they are not doing!

So how do they link it up in the future with no connection to your Hubze Card account now? Do you really think you would get $$ in a few months for your referrals who bought now the Facebook Fan Page Application (1. if you didn't buy it 2. Nobody gives months later commissions when they cashed it in now)?

Advertising around Hubze Cards

Second, he announced there would be advertising spots available around the Hubze Card only from members of the community which will be most likely Internet marketers. Lots of advertising for E-Books and Get Rich Schemes, Diets and so on will be coming.

Launch of the real Hubze Cards postponed

Third, doesn't it look fishy now as they announced in one of their first webinar in early March the Hubze Card will be launched for the Beta-Tester (more than 4.000 members) in the first week of April. But all you can hear and read now are Internet marketing strategies like

• look for new members who shall sign up under you, it's a great and FREE program and you might earn some commissions if they will buy some of our programs in the future
• sign up and buy this Facebook Fanpage Application now and start earning commissions before we sent the e-mails to the BIG Internet marketers

He even mentioned that his graphic designer is on holiday right now. Hmm, what the heck has he to do in holidays? The real big deal, the Hubze Card, would attract much more persons to sign-up, if it would be online right now (even when you have only a few social media sites available but that why it's called BETA-version!).

I forgot to mention, in this webinar David Foster said "We are not even in Beta, we are just in the Alpha-Version. We have only the Skeleton of the Hubze Card. But it looks great better than he thought it would look in the Alpha-Version".

Is the FREE Hubze Card only a marketing gag for building a BIG LIST to sell products to several 10.000 members?

I could bet in the next weeks, all members get flooded with more e-mails/webinars about new marketing programs and opportunities to sell them as affiliates (if you buy it first) instead of a further progress of the Hubze Card. It seems they use the FREE Hubze Card argument for sign-ups to build a BIG E-MAIL LIST and throw programs from their friends (he said it's one member from the community, difficult to check as you can't access the Hubze Cards :-) )

All you can do is wait for the real deal and not letting you irritating by the pitchy sales e-mails in which the Hubze Squad might promote over the next weeks several new programs!
What do you think about it as the time went by?

TOP 3 Online money making Scams

Image by Don Hankins via Flickr

Are you in need to raise a lot of money in a short time? Are you jobless and look desperately for a job? And you would like to do anything as long as you can see money flowing into your wallet?

These are mostly the questions several online money making websites asking YOU! They greet you into the world of making money online the easy and fast way! It sounds so perfect and it seems to allow you to enjoy much more time together with family & friends or even earn so much money that you can fulfill all your dreams within several days or weeks.

Doesn't this sound incredible? Too good to be true?

The truth is making money online does work.

But if it is would be that simple like just purchasing an affiliate marketing ebook or registering for the get-fast-rich schemes, how many persons around you who use the Internet already for several years would be already retired or wealthy?

If you really want to succeed on the Internet, you have to work for your own success by doing Internet marketing.

The truth hurts often, but it's the truth. You have to put in several hours daily / weekly into your Internet marketing efforts otherwise you will never make any money online.

On the other hand, if you are already giving up on Internet marketing and think that it's only a big hype, then you are also extremely wrong.

The fact is, I can show you the top 3 Online money making Scams and how untrue they are.

1. Online money making Scam - You can make 6 to 7 figures overnight (with payment proofs of Clickbank / Adsense / Paypal account screenshots).
   
   One of the biggest, fattest lies! It is simply a sales pitch to bait newcomers and desperately hopeless (jobless or low-income) visitors to purchase products. Most of them will do just anything and buy everything to get their hands on more real fast 'money'. More often than not, these buyers end up losing both - their own money and their time (and deleting the spam mails which you'll get as you're on their mailing list).
   
   
   
   
   
2. Online money making Scam - Everything you need to know about succeeding on the Internet is available in OUR product
   
   Sounds true when you read additionally the fake testimonials from recent buyers of the product but it's just a popular selling pitch to attract these desperate people mentioned already in the first Online money making Scam. Don't we know that such a product is not existent. Otherwise there would be already millions of millionaires working on the Internet. The truth is, there is no perfect product. Each product has its values that you see or buy online, but please do not allow the sales pitch to lead you to where the gurus want you to be.
   
   
   
3. Online money making Scam - Everything is automated and no effort is required.
   
   Believe me that there ain't no such thing as a free lunch in this world. Honestly, if it is as easy as it sounds, why would anyone want to own a day job instead of having money made online 'magically'?
   And in case you would own this "system", would you REALLY sell it for JUST $97? Please think twice before you click that "Buy me now"-Button!

• What are your experiences with online money making scams?
• Do you know of other online money making scams which are easily to detect?
• Did you buy one of these get-rich-quick ebooks, programs or participated in paid affiliate websites? Have they been useful or was it a waste of money?

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• 6 Ways Your Business Can Benefit From Building And Maintaining A Blog (slideshare.net)
• The Importance of Teaching Affiliates about Internet Marketing (marketersdaily.com)
• How To Report Email Fraud & Spam To The Proper Authorities (makeuseof.com)
• Internet Scams, Identity Theft And (slideshare.net)
• 'Free iPad' scam spreading online (guardian.co.uk)
• Watch out for Blog Marketing Scams (marketersdaily.com)

EntreCard: Responses of Ghost Droppers

Some words to the previous mentioned experiment of Ghost Droppers in EntreCard & the E-Mail of EntreCard:

I believe EVERYONE would wonder if someone shows up in the Inbox of EntreCard when their website would be down due to a server problem or virus.
How would you react if you would see the same amount of "Droppers" in your Inbox like i saw in the previous days (just with a purposely deleted widget)?

On the 9th February (short after EntreCard resets the drops) i wrote about the results from the 63 dropping members of 8th February in red color. So the members should have been already warned that it's an experiment to see who dropped cards even when the EntreCard-Widget is NOT AVAILABLE. But they still kept dropping cards.

11 of the accused members responded and their comments have been released now (they are mixed chronically within the other comments).

Here are some of their reasons:

One of these droppers said, using a cached Google search was his method to drop during these days as he couldn't find the EntreCard-Widget. It was well meant from him and he is doing it usually when a website is not reachable or the EntreCard not visible on the actual blog version for not loosing his Top dropper status (the user had been removed from the previous list as i saw it in my logs that he indeed came from Google).

Greetje greets you commented with an explanation on the Best travel pictures in the world blog. She uses each month the blog version from the first of the month (Browser cache) as another Dutch blogger told her previously to keep her browsing more secure.

I wonder now why do i and everyone else update our blogs/ the travel pictures blog (in the past) almost daily when now several of these accused members use old versions of my blog to drop their cards.

Anonymous (would have been nice to know who you are):

Erm... I use a cached browser? It caches sites and only updates when there is an update? You can use Google's cache to do the same thing. Hence anyone with any sense knows how to do you a favour when your site is sluggish and still manage to drop. Still this sort of slander is the last straw - to be honest many of us have invested years in dropping and I for one see this as a good time to leave for good.

My response to this - like mentioned above the blog was updated on 8th & 9th, so your browser should have loaded the newest version of my blog WITHOUT my EntreCard.


It's for sure if several members use only cached sites

• we won't receive any comments and
• the bounce rate from this members should be 100% as they look always at the same OLD POSTS or
• is it even worse and it doesn't count as page visit as these cached blogs are not accessed directly because they are saved on their local hard disks? GRRRRRRRRR!

Is there a reason to drop on them when they treat your blog and your updates in this way?

Something like this can make you as angry as when they would be real Ghost droppers.


Other member's comments:

Laane:

Well, I think you're not seeing things the way they are. In fact,I visit your blog every day at least once, but sometimes 5 or more times.
Why? Because I adgitize too.
So I think you're making mistakes.

Maybe I should start spending whole days commenting, so you can see I'm at the blogs.

Well, I;ve been face at entrecard with so many things the past years, this can be adeed, I guess.

I just would like to know how you could drop the card when it wasn't available on the two days! This has nothing to do with Adgitize as the Adgitize ads have been available and we don't have an Adgitize Inbox.
I know you had issues with viruses in the past and you said you made yourself an own drop list after this incident (around End of September/beginning of October 2009).

Julie @ Momspective:

I was out of town the dates listed and when I travel I outsource my drops. I only drop on those who drop on me and will speak with those individuals who I outsource my dropping to while I'm gone. I visit each site regularily, comment if I can (lately I can't much due to travel and medical issues so I do suck there) and buy ads on those sites as well. It takes me 9 hours to drop on my these sites throughout the day either using the snaplinks multiple web browser opener or the EC toolbar if I didn't get enough drops using my favorites list, who are people who drop or have dropped on me while I write, email and social network so I am taking this accusation very seriously. I appreciate the information and will be sure to look into it.

You outsourced the drops of your cards? Did you know that John from Make nothing online catched Momspective Reviews last week in his experiment, too, for three days?

Paul from Hacking the Hacked

1.Comment:

Wow what a funny post, I see one of my cards on your list, and here I am commenting. I also see at least four cards of other members who comment on one of my blogs. And, I see quite a few cards from members who also use Blog Catalog, I know they use Blog Catalog because their avatars show on my BC widget after they have visited one of my blogs.

I have been thinking of leaving EC because the bounce rate from members who actually do visit one of my blogs only to drop a card and then leave, is far more harmful to my blogs ranking than someone who uses a "ghost dropper list." This post might be the straw that broke the camels back, so congratulations to you on suceedding at something might be in order.

2.Comment:

Me again, sorry but I am upset that my card appears on your fake droppers list. I follow a few members who have been quick to jump on your bandwagon through the Google friend connect widget, wich I will remove myself from now. Those that I regularly visit like The English Wildernes, I wont anymore. I am very sorry that I spent so much time on this blog the other day reading your posts about increasing blog traffic.

I am using my url/name in my comments so people can see that members on the cards above do visit EC sites, see who is making comments on my blogs for yourself.

Paul, thanks for reading some articles in the past! Sorry to say Paul, i'm sure i never visited your blog in the past. My visit and commenting today was the first time. You see a lot of the accused members at the moment in my Blogcatalog list, some appear there again for the first time after a long time. Most of them came from an alarming e-mail from their friends when i can trust some Analytic programs from Google and Live Feedjit.

UPDATE:
I REMOVED THE MEMBERS WHO COMMENTED AND SOME REGULAR DROPPERS OF MY BLOGS WHICH COULD FALL UNDER THE in EntreCard's Blog and in their E-Mail mentioned cache issue!!!

Everyone should make for yourself a picture if these members interacted with you in the past or not.

If they did interact with you, continue to support them with dropping on them.
If they didn't interact with you, it might be the same "problem" like in this case, they just use a cached version of your blog or have been really ghost dropping with the use of

• a script
• a bookmarked Drop-Widget link
• quick ghost drop pages (which have been now disabled)
  

EntreCard members get scammed by these members!

Like written on the Best travel pictures in the world blog, i made a "secret" test on 8th and 9th February 2009 to see who is gaming EntreCard's Dropping System.

For this test i had to remove the EntreCard widget to see if some members still are able to appear in my Inbox. I'm sorry if i caused a lot of members problems as many of you tried to search for the EntreCard-widget several times a day (it was for the best means of us).

To my shocking surprise it wasn't just a handful of members who fake drops in our inbox, it has been more than 65 members who never visit your blog.
They just use a Ghost dropper list or a program that is dropping only on the yellow drop box. With this method you can finish dropping 300 blogs in less than 15 minutes.

I decided now to show off these FAKE members who didn't physically visit your web site, so that you can decide by yourself if you still want to support them or if you dump them (no more dropping on them) to show them that WE DON'T ACCEPT CHEATERS IN ENTRECARD.

Several hours ago EntreCard deleted the Best travel pictures in the world blog from their system. But after 3 1/2 hours i got the blog reinstated and you can drop again on the Best travel pictures in the world blog!

EntreCard even wants to look now into the matter of Ghost drop lists and how to change the code, so that we members get REAL VISITORS and not FAKE DROPS IN OUR INBOX!

One list which i suspect has played the malicious part for so many fake drops, has been deleted after i told EntreCard about it and they suspended the account of this person (or warned her that it will get suspended if she doesn't remove this list).


Here have been the members who scam us regularly in EntreCard, like you can see there are a lot of TOP Droppers who actually never come to your blog but a lot of you give them even a FREE LINK each month.

UPDATE:

The Responses of the accused members have been published in the comment section a choice can be seen on Responses of the Ghost Droppers.

For the members who didn't believe me!
This is my single Dropbox of this blog which could be used everywhere to cheat on me!
EntreCard made this kind of cheating after this experiment NOW UNAVAILABLE!
So there is no more reason to display the picture of these members who used this system!

Read my apology for the falsely accused EntreCard Ghost droppers

EntreCard: Another Ad Scam! In your queue, too?

As i logged in my EntreCard Dashboard to see which ads have been auto-approved in the last days i came across this ad on the left side. It was paid with ECs (it's not one of the sponsored Ads!).
This is NOT an ad for a blog. This is an ad for Sponsored Tweets from Izea. It means it's an affiliate ad. If i would run this ad on my blog, you would be redirected to Sponsored Tweets Sign-up page.

It's similar to the ads which showed up in the previous month. Someone just edited the landing page and EntreCard does not check this change of your landing page!

If you see this ad in your advertiser queue, PLEASE REPORT IT to EntreCard.
So that they can delete this blog and of course you should REJECT the ad!

Tomorrow i will blog about the new feature in CMF Ads - their Network Ads for 10$ (what's good or bad about it for publishers and advertisers)

In two days i will post "Facts about Sponsored Tweets and other money-making programs for Twitter - how to be successful with these programs".

Small Adgitize update: You can already login and do your clicks, the stats haven't been updated yet but you still CAN'T renew your ad! -> follow me on Twitter for realtime updates from Adgitize's forum!

EntreCard: Revealing the Secret behind the 3 identical ads in your inbox!

BigDaddyRichard from Trader's Hub wrote yesterday and Eli from Businessphere wrote today about an ad that appears in many of our EntreCard InBoxes not only once but three times.
In my case it appeared three times at the end of each day (since 27th November). I think the person behind this ad drops especially on the TOP 300 blogs to get as many clicks as possible for its purposes.

Big Daddy Richard and Eli think it is a trick of EntreCard as the same ad picture appears three times in your inbox.

But the solution is very simple, no trick by EntreCard but the member tricked EntreCard and its members.
And in this case it means, the member uses THREE DIFFERENT accounts for three blogs. As i read now the comments on some of the mentioned blogs (description below), it seems he setup these blogs in the past for other persons (or under other names) but they have the same appearance (blog templates). Some are not updated since August 2008!

If you hover with your mouse over the three pictures you can see that they are linked with three different member accounts
http://entrecard.com/t/oc/54360
http://entrecard.com/t/oc/53839
http://entrecard.com/t/oc/33411

To access now the user profile you have to take the number of each link and add it to
http://entrecard.com/user_details/

If you click on these three links, you will be taken to the three "different" accounts

http://entrecard.com/user_details/54360 --> http://entrecard.com/details/142085 Software Blog
http://entrecard.com/user_details/53839 --> http://entrecard.com/details/142089 Jennys Personal Blog
http://entrecard.com/user_details/33411 --> http://entrecard.com/details/141888 Reahsblog

The Software blog seems to have a redirect to the -for all three same- targeted web site http://blogproduction.blogspot.com/

If you click on the given URL in the Blog details it takes you to the above mention Blogproduction website (without any EntreCard widget).

Have a look at the MOST RECENT POST and click one of the posts, this will take you to the REAL Blog behind the picture (and all except the SOFTWARE BLOG and ReahsBlog which you can only access by the below mentioned Blogroll listing!) have an EntreCard widget.
If you look on this Blogproduction website you can see that in the Blogroll "Jennys Personal Blog" and "Reahsblog" is mentioned (there is the connection that it's the same user with different accounts, perhaps he wants to cash-in the referral ECs as linked blogs wouldn't be allowed to receive additional free ECs and so on?)

EntreCard System is too easy to abuse!

You just have to go to your Dashboard:

1. Take a look at the section "Your Blog" in the middle of the page
2. Click on "Edit"
3. Change the website URL to any other website which you would like to promote :)
4. Save it, EntreCard doesn't look any more if this is a page with EntreCard widget (otherwise these THREE blogs would have been already deleted!).
5. In case we report them, EntreCard might get active and sent a message to their Dashboard to place the EC-widget on this blog within a specific time frame (24 to 72 hours)
   

Facts about Paid-to-promote.net

After the first payment from Paid-to-promote.net i knew it's not a scam but i didn't know what would happen the following days with my visitors.

The Facts about Paid-to-promote.net:

• Yes, they pay regularly on 15th and on 30th each month.
  Since the first payment on 15th September i received two more payments (30th September and 15th October). The total amount is 1.78 $ after 35 days.
  
  
• Yes, it is easy money as long as you receive enough visitors from these countries:
  United States, Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain.
  They have to stay longer than 10 seconds on your website (seldom to reach if you use EntreCard and Adgitize as most of these persons drop and run).
  On average i had 10 to 15 visitors from my 900 visitors from whom i got credits (0.004 $) from paid-to-promote.net
  
  

The negative side effects of paid-to-promote.net

• If you are a Preferred Publisher in Adgitize, you will get suspended from this Preferred Publisher program as your website will redirect visitors or pop-ups occur. This will result in a loss of around 20 free visitors, more worse if you are a paid Preferred Publisher in Adgitize. After you delete your code, you can write them an e-mail to reinstate you again for this program!
  
  
• It would be against the Terms of Service of EntreCard, too, when pop-ups and redirects happen on your blog.
  
  
• You can't control which kind of advertisement your visitors will see. Some wrote me that they even got sent to PORN web sites (this was a redirect from our Baby-Blog).
  
  
• You won't get approved by CMF-Ads if you have the Money-making code from paid-to-promote.net on your website as it redirects the admin :(
  
  
• That's the money-making code:
  <"iframe width=486 height=60 frameborder=0 src='http://www.777seo.com/seo.php?username=cornyman' marginwidth=0 marginheight=0 vspace=0 hspace=0 allowtransparency=true scrolling=no><"/iframe">
  if you use this code, you will loose some of your visitors/future readers, it's up to you if you want to play this game for a few cents as the payout is just 10 cents.
  

This is the referral code which you can use to earn passive income with paid-to-promote.net instead of putting the above mentioned code on your website!

Try paid-to-promote.net, but i warned you :)

Tip: It's best to use paid-to-promote.net in combination with a traffic exchange.
Most of the time, the visitors have to stay longer than 20 seconds on your website, so you could get a nice amount in your Paypal-Account.
But remember to put the code only on your website after you got the approval and you wouldn't mind if they suspend your account after a while because of redirects and pop-ups!

Is Paid-to-promote.net a SCAM-program??

I guess many EntreCard and Adgitize members saw this Get paid to Promote at any Location-advertisement on a lot of blogs in the past days because one guy promoted this program in Adgitize ;)

I signed up for this program some months ago but never copied the code in my sidebar until i saw this ad in Adgitize.

As they increased their CPM-Rate up to 4$ for 1000 page views for specific countries (United States, Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, for these countries 2$/1000 page views > Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain), it's a good deal to try it now.
Especially when the payout date should be the 15th and 30th of each month, you wouldn't loose much and we could test if it's now a SCAM-Program or not.

I put the code on 11th September on my blog and the earnings have been counted each day in their statistics. They varied between 5 and 16 $-Cents each day, depending on the location of the visitors and the length of their visit on my blog.

The big surprise came as i opened today my mailbox and found in my spam file a Paypal-Mail. This time it was not a Scam-Mail :) It was the small payment of 0,47 $ from Paid-to-promote. Now i have to put it on all my blog and see if they pay me again on 30th September :)
Anyone else got paid from this program yesterday?

Next post will be an earnings update from Adgitize and some information to their new free traffic-program!

UPDATE:
I deleted the Paid-to-promote.net code from this blog (on my other blogs it seems not to be such a big problem) as it appears that many users from the USA, UK and Australia get redirected to some advertiser pages!
In this case you will loose more readers than you can earn with this program!

Adsense: Are Top Keyword Lists Scam?

If you type in the Search Engines the keywords "Adsense Top Keyword list", you'll get a lot of websites who offer you "high paying" keywords.

Most of the keywords are about

• domain yahoo
• domain registration yahoo
• car credit
• auto insurance quote
• mesothelioma lawyers (lung cancer caused by asbestos)
• prepaid credit card
  

If you look now what is behind this keywords you can see that a lot of persons will key in these words and search for it. In the case of mesothelioma, it will be just less advertisers who are specialized on this topic, so the clicks cost a lot for the specific lawyer.

The cost per click (CPC) -which the lists show us - are usually the costs the advertiser has to pay to Google, it's not the money that you will get for a click on one of this ads.

So what do these Google Adsense Top Keyword List represent:

Many searches for those keywords, a high amount paid by the advertiser but in the end we have also a lot of clicks.

And when these ads are clicked, the paid ad price has to be shared by the persons who have the ads running on their websites!

That means, if the Average CPC is 50 $ and there are 25 or 100 clicks each day, you can't expect that you will get 50$ for this click.
It should be perhaps between 50 cents and 2 $, sometimes even less, depending on which rank the ad is presented on your website!

If you like to have a specialized pre-built web page with high paying Adsense keywords you could be interested in the Adsense Package including already Amazon Affiliate Program links and usually more than 200 posts!

Scam? myLot reactivated our accounts today!!

Today my wife got an e-mail from myLot's mother company "Wasingertech.com".

There they wrote that they re-activate her account and if she made already a new account, she should cancel the new one and use only the old one.

In my case i didn't get an e-mail (yet?) but i could also log in in my account. My new account got automatically set inactive (and the earnings, too :-( ).

So far i don't know why we got set inactive for over 12 days and why after the re-activation our earnings for the whole month of January were set to Zero. I hope that we get again an answer to this question in the next days before we get the payout around 15th February 2009.

But so far i'm lucky that this case has now nearly a happy-end!

Which experiences do you have website that banned you and afterward they lift the ban again?

Scam? Banned in myLot with over 300 other members

On 27th of January i got banned together with my wife and some other 300 members.

Most of these members had multiple accounts or did just register to make troubles to other members like non-sense responses or discussions. And for some of them their only purpose is to rate other members negative so that their star rating will be lowered significantly.

For the members like my wife and me it's not clear what has been the background for our banning. There have been also other cases which don't share one internet connection. We share our connection with other house mates in Kuala Lumpur or with family members in Johor Bahru, but we have separate accounts, separate paypal-address and so on.

After sending myLot 2 e-mails regarding this issue, there hasn't been any answer yet. If you read their terms they also state that they can ban you for no reason or they don't have the need to investigate further why you have been getting banned.

They other possibility could be that we got banned because of the "abuse reports" which every member can do when they click on the "!" after each response/comment or discussion. Even in this case you can't defend yourself against members who don't write the truth.

In the end i registered newly and my wife doesn't take part anymore until it's clear what the problem of our accounts have been (if we get an answer at all).

I hope i will see you again in myLot, the best paying social forum in the Internet!

If you had the same problem like my wife an me, please leave a comment, so that we know more about the backgrounds about this banning which had a duration from one week.

Don't get scammed: Use this Scamlist first

Today i publish some of the websites where you can find informations about other online opportunities which are not worth joining/visiting because they are scam-sites.

An article how to protect yourself of being scammed can be found here in my blog.

List of Websites where you can read reports of Scam-Sites

• Better Business Bureau
• Ripoffreport.com
• Internet Scam Buster
• Fraud.org
• Fraudaid.com
• Ftc.gov
• Scams.com
• I've tried that (including many online money making opportunities which are working!)
  

Was this post helpful for you?

Which other web sites do you know, who report scam sites and are worth mentioning in this list?

Just leave me a comment about it!

Scam: How to detect fraud and scam sites!

Today, I'll show you how to keep your hard-earned money from being stolen by some unscrupulous persons, companies or websites.

Sadly, quite a few wealthy individuals lost their entire fortune and are now penniless because they invested their money with Wall Street veteran Bernie Madoff. He is alleged to have lost $50 billion.

There are some vital lessons to learn from this incredible Ponzi scheme. By taking some simple preventative steps, you can avoid being wiped out by financial scam artists.

First, you can't count on the state-owned regulators, especially the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC), to protect your hard-earned money.
They act the same like the police: They are better at finding criminals than preventing crime.

Why the SEC misses most fraud cases
The SEC is often in bed with the investment houses.
George Stigler, professor of economics at University of Chicago and long-time colleague of Milton Friedman, demonstrated this many years ago. Over time, regulatory agencies are corrupted by the companies they regulate.

In the end, many ex-SEC employees are hired by broker/dealers to keep the SEC at bay. That's apparently what happened at Madoff Investment Securities.
A team of SEC lawyers investigated Madoff's broker/dealership a few years ago and found nothing amiss.

Second, the Madoff case is so large and hurtful to so many investors, from Steven Spielberg to small Jewish foundations, that the Democratically-controlled Congress will have another big reason to impose another heavy dose of regulation on Wall Street.

Looking back, investors have only themselves to blame if they got caught losing their shirt. Mister Bernie Madoff had impeccable credentials on Wall Street. Who can you trust if not the former chairman (founder) of Nasdaq?

But there were plenty of red flags:

• Refusal of promoters to reveal exactly how Madoff made money: Clients were always told that his option strategy on index funds was "it's too complex" to explain. Smart investors will avoid managed accounts they don't understand.
  
• Accounts made money too consistently. Madoff's managed accounts showed steady returns of 10-12% year in and year out, through bull and bear markets. Madoff promoters claimed that Madoff's funds "never" lost money - no such guarantee is possible with managed accounts.
  
• Madoff's managed accounts had no separate custodian and no independent outside auditor (other than a small 3-man accounting firm).

How can you avoid financial fraud?

Three simple rules:

1. Manage your own funds as much as possible with large, reputable discount brokers where the federal insurance guarantees accounts.

2. If you turn your money over to another's management, make sure you diversify into several managed accounts.Otherwise it could leave you penniless if fraud happens. Managed accounts should preferably buy publicly-traded, no-load mutual funds and exchange traded funds/notes, whose value can be tracked daily.

3. And most importantly, you should make sure all managed accounts have separate custodians and independent, outside accountants to audit your accounts.

How can you avoid scam sites?

Three simple rules:

1. If you have to pay money for the access to a website, search first in Google, Yahoo or any other search webpage if other persons have experience with that website and if their information is worth the money!
A good source for these experienced persons is myLot. On the right side is the link for the "make money" interest. There you find many discussions about sites who pay and sites who are not worth the money!

2. Look out if there are free information available in the Internet about the topic you search before you sign-up with a website for which you have to pay for these informations.
Example: Paid Surveys

3. Don't trust websites who give you a huge amount when other websites (the majority) pay only a percentage of this amount regularly to their users (mostly some of the Paid to Click-Sites who promote they pay you 1 or more $ for one click on their ads). In the end you just get a lot of "spam" mails from them!


The list with Scam-reporting Internet pages can be found in this posting!

Hope it was a useful information, just leave me a comment and share your thoughts or stories, where you got scammed or what prevented yourself of getting scammed!

Earning money with paid surveys

As everyone knows, there are many pages in the Internet who offer you some lists of paid survey companies. But you have to pay for them!

Most of these companies are a scam. They just want your money, even they know you could find these informations in the Internet for free!

On the other side, many of them also don't tell you, that most of the offers are only for citizens of the USA, Canada or UK. The countries with the highest spending in surveys.

I have found some pages where they separated the survey companies and the participant's country.

1. Yellowsurveys - the yellow pages for survey - free
2. Paidsurveychoices -includes a directory - free
   
3. Surveypolice - check here if it's a scam site and look how other users rate survey sites - free

Feel free to contact or comment, if you have some other pages which i should mention in this list!

Welcome to my first post

In my blog you will find everyday new and classical financial advises. There will be also opportunities how to earn additional money or how to save money and make some bargains in the Internet and in the real world.

One of the first advises will be

Get Rich online but only slowly

There are several opportunities to earn money and opportunities to loose money (called "scam"-sites) in the internet.

It is essential to distinguish between

1. web pages that just promote high earnings for which you usually have to sign up and pay money
   
   
2. web pages that give you informations for free but use your e-mail address at first to let you get to these informations
   
   
3. web pages that sell E-Books which promise you the fast money
   
   
4. web pages like this one where you get informations for free.

More about these four kinds of web pages in the next posts.

Have a nice day and look out for my next messages. You'll be surprised what you would miss :-)

Martin