Slashdot Mirror
'Free Broadband' Scam Exposed
dslknowitall writes: "It appears that http://www.dslreports.com is first on the crime scene regarding DSLmonster.com's scam to offer free broadband access for the price of only two spam's a day (remember winfire, anyone?).
"If you remember back on December 18th we raised the warning flag concerning a DSL provider known as DSLMonster.com, who's business stank of illegitimacy. With a website made up of plagiarized portions of other providers terms of service, and a qualification system that claimed it could provide service to locations like "the dark side of the moon", it appeared to be a scam waiting to happen." Not only a well written piece but lots o' backgroud too!"
As it turns out, our scrutiny only helped to improve the scam, as our users nitpicking of the sites inconsistencies provided a template for DSLMonster to author a more convincing website that would appear a month later and would lead to more bilked customers.
I just hope people don't get angry at DSLReports for what they did. They were only trying to provide a service for their readers.
According to the employees of DSLMonster, many of whom seemed to have legitimate DSL industry experience, they claim they were completely unaware of Mr. Dyer's plans...
The Enron defense, anyone? How can people in a compnay not know of the plans by management. Anyone in the billing department, for example, would have seen the excessive billing practices.
Hard to believe it's been a year (almost to the day).
Winfire article
That was less scammy than this one though. Winfire was built on the solid premise that people would stay crazy and pour money into crazy ventures for at least another two years.
While this ISP was not as much of a sham as the ISP the articule links to, they had an executive with access to the company's purse strings. This person outright stole money from the company's bank account for personal use; we are talking about millions of dollars here. Finally, when the company went bankrupt one or two years later, this crook fled the country, and, as far as I know, is living in the Carribian.
Similar to how Enron did things; get a lot of investment money; start a company, hire employees and pay off congressmen to give the company an air of legitimacy; then take as much money from the company bank account as one can get away with. Do this until the company dies and the executives are living in the bahamas.
- Sam
The secret to enjoying Slashdot is to realize that it should not be taken too seriously.
For the heck of it, I ran a Google Search for "Corey Dyer" "New Jersey" and it brought up one white pages entry. Maybe it's him, maybe it's not. Might as well try.
"You're never ready, just less unprepared."
Advertisers aside aren't the customers protected by their credit card company? If I order a service with my credit card and the service isn't rendered or a goods not delivered aren't I only liable for up to a certain amount (terms of agreement defined by the credit card company, usually its $50 maximum)
Seems to me that we humans are just genetically designed to be bilked and suckered.
How else could things like this have worked?
How else could the whole "Nigerian banking transfer with your help needed desperately" genre still be successful after all these years?
A fool and his money do part quite often.
It seems to me that the problem here is the reading of "dark" in a bit more literal than necessary way. I think the expression is using "dark" to refer to any place that is not visible. Certainly the far side of the Moon is hidden, which is what the Old English "deorc" meant. And the expression "in the dark" means literally "in secret," which is what the far side was until the Soviets orbited it for the first time. Certainly there are folks who draw the conclusion from the expression that there is actually a side that is always dark, but then there are people who can't figure out why there's no ham in hamburger and others who think that peanuts are nuts. These characters will be with us for a while yet and correcting their limited astroinimical knowledge, it seems to me, is a waste of valuable time.
What's being missed in regard to the song title is the feeling it's trying to express, that is, somewhere far far away. This is basically the same meaning expressed when one makes reference to the city of Timbuktu. Certainly Timbuktu isn't any farther away than a lot of other places. The point, though, is that the normal way to get there by those who actually do so is to travel across the Saharu on the back of a camel. The natural question, then, is how do you get to the "dark side of the Moon"? Well, first you have to get to the Moon, though preferably not on the back of camel. And you're certainly not going to land on the side that's not illuminated. So you land on the light side and then travel overland from there. That is indeed a long way away and expresses the intended feeling in a clear enough way. This is about art. It's not about science. People who try to make it about science are, really, missing the point, and need to find a hobby.
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.