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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."
In addition to taking Pacific WebWorks (PWEB) to court, Google said it is continuing efforts to remove scam sites from its index. The company also said it would permanently disable Google AdWords accounts that provide a "poor or harmful" user experience whether or not they use Google's trademark illegally.
Sounds like they plan on trying to get rid of the scams from adwords.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
The correct procedure would be to get rid of the "Adwords for Domains" program entirely.
There was a time when geeks found it abhorrent that people would buy up thousands of domain names just to fill a site with adverts and pollute search engine indexes. Then Google made an ad program specifically for people who do this, and suddenly it's not a problem any more.
"people who just want to do minimal work, never leave the house, and yet still make thousands per week?"
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I actually used to work at a company who made paper products. Cards, bookmarks, etc. What was unique to this company, and several others around the US, is that they had elements which were handmade. They needed to be assembled. The company would employ assemblers to work at home. Many of the in-office employees would also take work home. Something simple like a bookmark would pay 3 cents per piece. It doesn't sound like much, but once they learn how to do it efficiently, it's possible--and likely--that assemblers would make over $12 per hour. I made over $300 one weekend. I was single, and all I did over the weekend was put together bookmarks, so that wasn't the standard. One problem we had was finding new folks to be at-home assemblers. The job we had was legit. We'd post on craigslist and other places that we were hiring for a legit work at home assembly job, and the ads would always--ALWAYS--be marked as spam, or scam, or not legit. The job was a local one. Ie, you couldn't do it over the internet, or the phone. You also did not have to pay any money for materials or supplies. Those to items seemed to help the legitimacy of our ads, and we would include both in the ads, but the reputation referenced by the parent is certainly there.
There are work at home jobs, and many are legit. Unfortunately, scammers have found that there are many many people who will pay lots of money for the convenience of some impossible task that pays pennies.
...and Microsoft wouldn't take action against them because they'd double Bing's search traffic.
...and why should they be? They're not law enforcement.
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.