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FTC, Google Go After Scammers
coondoggie notes that the Federal Trade Commission said it was going after three outfits that allegedly made robocalls to sell worthless credit-card interest-rate reduction programs for large up-front fees (as much as $1,495). And reader Cwix tips us that today Google filed a lawsuit against Pacific WebWorks and other unnamed defendants for allegedly using the company's name and logo to promote fraudulent work-at-home money-making schemes. "Kate Lister, author of Undress for Success — The Naked Truth about Making Money at Home, estimates that more than 95% of Google hits on the words 'work at home' are scams, link to scams, or other dead ends."
I got mentioned in the post:-D Yay Me, I feel important now. Back on topic... Im glad google is suing these scammers, still not sure google isn't evil thou.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
scam.
old news.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
Say it isn't true. How ever could someone be so cruel as to scam people who just want to do minimal work, never leave the house, and yet still make thousands per week?
Actually, to be fair, I didn't think that many would be scams - I thought a bigger proportion would be money laundering exercises.
No, thought not.
Going to stop offering AdWords on those scam domain squatting pages?
No, thought not.
Going to give back the money to advertisers when they close down scam sites on which adverts have been displayed?
No, thought not.
Thank goodness there's helpful competition in Internet advertising brokerage.
No, thought not.
Google isn't going after scammers in general for the good of the public. From TFA:
They're going after someone who is threatening their name, trademark and reputation. You can bet that if it had read "Use Bing to make 1000s of Dollars", Google wouldn't be involved.
UTF-8: There and Back Again
estimates that more than 95% of Google hits on the words 'work at home' are scams, link to scams, or other dead ends
If this is true, doesn't the FTC fraud department have it's job already done for it? If it were 5%, the fraud department would have to really work to find a scam, in this case, just click on a link, and viola, someone to prosecute.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
"... Kate Lister, author of Undress for Success — The Naked Truth about Making Money at Home..."
Admit it, your first thought was "webcam stripper". Mine was :-)
The website at http://undress4success.com/ is actually quite interesting.
And, no, it ain't a webcam stripper :-)
Sig erased via substitution of an identical one.
"Undress for Success — The Naked Truth about Making Money at Home"
Is the subtext here that the only way to make money working from home is as a webcam stripper?
Or merely that when you're on the phone to your working-from-home colleague, he may be naked?
The solution in the movie was "draw a bigger line next to it". Well, the evil of "why do you care if you have nothing to hide" will be pushed aside by bigger tangible evil of these scammers.
[*] blah= iru kOdukaL, (meaning Two linesegments in Tamil), by K Balachandar.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
What exactly can a programming language come after scammers in? It makes no sense!
I'll believe Google is serious about stopping fraud when they make it easier to report the hordes of affiliates of http://www.threestarsinc.com/ who use Gmail accounts to abuse the craigslist job boards. If you'll check this page: http://www.threestarsinc.biz/ they spell out their business plan to use job seekers as a quality target for marketers.
While it may be legit on the the face of it, when combined with their pyramid-like rankings for job applicants who drive more traffic to their sites it has ruined job searching on craigslist. I have wasted MANY hours composing replies to ads only to get the auto-replies directing me to one of their many "front" websites where they collect your information and have you apply for online education and such.
I spent another couple of hours trying to figure out how to report the abused Gmail accounts to Google. Only after creating a gmail account to gain access to and search their forum did I find a link for reporting abuse which gave an error when submitted. I now just flag any craigslist ad that uses a gmail address to reply.
When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law he tore his robes.2Kings22:11
That reminds me of this item from despair.com
I get a robocall from "Card Services" every few days. They never phone when I'm at home, so I can't tell them what I think of them. I also get robocalls offering me a new home security system, and vacations to various locations.
...laura
Advertising saying "Send me £5 and I will tell you the secret of making money". When then send you cash tell them the secret is to advertise saying "Send me £5 and I will tell you the secret of making money"
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Does this mean that 5% of the links are actual legitimate opportunities for me to work at home and earn thousands of dollars a week in my spare time?
*That* should be the headline here.
Are 5% of the penis enlargement ads legitimate, too??
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
I used to do this when I was a teenager. It was one of the three classic telemarketing schemes in Montreal (paper rolls for debit machines was next, listings in fake yellow page magazines is the other). Derog is what made me the most money though.
Telemarketing companies would pick up leads that contained a high level of people with debt across many high interest credit cards (regular/department store/etc) and offered them a low interest rate credit card where they can stuff all their debt on to, for the cost of thousands.
The trick to convincing them was:
"But sir, this is not really an out of pocket expense since the interest savings will pay for it."
Since most people on the lead sheets got into the position they are in because they were never good at budgeting to begin with, that line was the line that sealed the deal.
Of course, the caveat to this plan is that you've simply just got a new credit card, and freed up your others to spend more with and really fuck yourself over. So really, the scheme was akin to a sub prime mortgage on your DEBT.
Naturally, when you're sixteen and realize that you could make a hundreds if not a thousand in a week of part time work, the grand scale of what you're doing isn't obvious.
I love how the Internetz has allowed any lazy SOB to be a scammer. What happened to all the hard work you used to have to do in order to "work at home" scam people? Back in the day pre-Internetz, a college roommate of mine answered one of those "stuff envelopes from home" that used to appear in like every college newspaper want ads at the time. It cost like $20 up front or something like that to get the package. When the package arrived, it was basically an envelope with a sheet of paper that said something to the effect of "take out ads in college newspapers advertising to stuff envelopes at home, then make photocopies of this document and mail it to anyone that answers the ad." LOL We laughed so hard at him. Because after all, $20 was a lot of beers back then what with the nickel beer nights and such :)
Yesterday I got robocalled by this scam at work - which, since I don't ever give out my work phone to a credit card company or bank, know to be bogus.
The FTC needs to shoot to kill the people who do this, and then give their lifeless corpses a fair trial.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --