There are few things that get me as pissed off as Internet scams and unsolicited commercial email, better known as spam.
Today, one of my respected colleagues posted a link in Facebook to a website called “TIME Insider” that claims that Google is hiring people to work from home. The site is made to look like something from TIME Magazine, but it quickly becomes apparent that there is no connection. First, the URL appears to be a page in a subdirectory of the main site, but there are no other pages on the site. The links in the navigation bar all point to the same page, so the whole site is clearly a single page intended to “report” on the main page of the signup page. The “news report” specifically states that Google is hiring people to work for them and claims that no experience is necessary. The “report” even features a section titled “How To Apply For A Google Job” with links to the signup page.
The “news report” first says that Google is asking for $2 to cover shipping and handling of their “work from home kit”. Further down, it says the amount is $2.95. It also states that the kit is distributed through “local websites” in your area. Isn’t that the whole point of the Internet? There’s no such thing as “local”!
Once one follows the link to the signup page, the form asks for the mark’s signup information. At the bottom of the page is a disclaimer that specifically states “Google™ does not endorse or sponsor this site and is in no way affiliated with this offer.” But wait, the original “breaking news” report specifically said Google is doing the hiring and implied that you will be a Google employee: “We understand the psychology of working from home and we want to give our employees tasks that are simple and easy, and reward them generously in order to keep them motivated.”
So $2.95 is all that stands between me and being a part of a $220 billion company. I can work for Google, no job applications or interviews required. And I don’t even have to leave home! Who wouldn’t jump at that?
If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. We have heard this sentence so often, it has become part of our collective consciousness. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it encoded into our DNA, if we could only spell it using just the letters G, A, T, and C. And yet, people fall for this crap every day. Someone must be falling for these ripoffs, or they would soon stop. If I send out a million emails or get a million hits on my website, and only one tenth of one percent of the viewers answer the ad, I’ve got 1000 suckers. In this case, almost $3000. Not a bad return for my investment of registering a couple of domains and throwing up a couple of web pages. Next week, I’ll have to register a couple of new domains, change a little of the wording, and throw the pages back up. Of course, I’ll also have to stay a step ahead of Google’s and TIME’s lawyers, and maybe move around a lot too. Great way to raise my family.
As users of the Internet, we must learn to separate legitimate businesses from the ripoffs. Some scams are especially easy to spot. We’ve all gotten these emails, usually from Nigeria and sometimes specifically addressed from Nigeria or some other country, in which a long-lost relative has died and left us millions of dollars, and all they need are a bank account and an advance payment of a few hundred dollars (or more) to cover the costs of getting the big payoff to us. Usually the person writing the email is a lawyer or a “barrister”, which is another word for lawyer. No matter how you feel about lawyers, we can all agree that they are usually very well educated, and since language is their business, they should be pretty good at written English. So why is their grammar so terrible? Even if I had a huge sum of money that I needed to convey to a person in another country, whose language I was unfamiliar with, I would make sure I hired a representative who was fluent in that language.
Other scams are a little harder to spot. They make the page look like a news report (TV infomercials have been notorious for this too). They throw in the name of a well-known successful company, like Google. They do their spelling and grammar homework. But before even getting to the signup page, it was obvious the rest of the site was missing.
The Internet can be a valuable asset in creating a business, or for doing business. In some cases, it can be the entire business. We depend upon it. Some of our clients have created entire business models around nothing but a website or a web application. But they are delivering true value to their customers. They charge a fair price for what they deliver. There’s no bait-and-switch. Their websites list contact information and, if applicable, a refund policy. If they ask for your credit card number, make sure the page has an SSL certificate, and if you have any doubts, check that the certificate is actually assigned to the business as it represents itself, and that it is traceable to a certification authority, such as Verisign or Thawte, and not a self-signed certificate. This last part is easier now, because most modern browsers will warn you if it isn’t.
It all comes down to supply and demand. The more we all learn to spot the ripoffs and ignore them, or perhaps even report them to the authorities where appropriate, the fewer ripoffs will show up. Maybe someday, we’ll only get wanted email in our inbox. Wouldn’t that be nice?
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