Don't Click Here For A Free iPod

fermion writes "Do you wonder what all those free iPods links are about? Do you wonder why apparently rational Slashdot users would use their .sig line to push an offer that seems little more than a thinly veiled pyramid scheme? Answers to these questions can be found in this NYT article (personal information, with no free iPod, is required). The plan itself seems simple. Rat out your friends to advertisers, and get a free gadget. The firm in question, Gratis, Inc, gets a bounty on each customer. The firm claims to have a revenue of $15 million in 2004. They claim to give away 500 iPods a week. If, as the article claims, each contact earns a bounty of around $50, we might presume that 1 in 12 contacts get a free iPod. This firm seem fairly upfront. Another firm mentioned in the article, Consumer Research Corporation, seems much less so. As always, read the fine print."

Comments

Read with no registration

[ErichTheWebGuy]

http://www.bugmenot.com/ offers a way around this stupid registration requirement for this and many other websites. For example, I just got in thanks to them using the following:

user: suckerdj
pass: suckerdj

If enough people start using bugmenot, these bastards just might stop requiring us to give them our life history to access a bit of information.

Re:Read this carefully O/T

[tonsofpcs]

Pacifica Rocks!
BTW, without Pacifica, we wouldn't have ever contested the FCC censorship crap, then again, without them we wouldn't have had George Carlin's filthy words being THE LIST of words we can't say............