Saturday, May 27, 2006

Opt-in Spam - Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public 

Is it still cynicism if you're right?

I was working on the blog was actually reading the ads from Google's Adsense program because I had done some work with the template and was making sure everything was working as it should.

One of the ads offered $300 (presumably U.S.) for 15 minutes work.

Now in the agreement I have with the Adsense program I agreed not to click on my own ads. Clicks are what I get paid for. We're not even allowed to suggest to people that they support the site by clicking on the ads. However in the interests of journalism I had to just this once.

Clicking on the ad brought me to a clean, simple page for MAXIMUMPAYJOBS.COM that tells you on the front page:

"This survey should take approximately 15 minutes to complete. The compensation for this survey is $300."

Sounds simple eh? Easy money! Sign up, bang out the survey, money in the bank except for a possible hitch in the terms and conditions:

"If you who accept this offer and give us your email address you will receive emails featuring products and services which we believe will be of interest to you. You are never obligated to buy or use any product or service we offer you. By submitting your email address, you accept, without limitation or qualification, all of the terms and conditions in this user agreement. Compensation for surveys will be paid only to those consumers who are both selected for a survey by email invitation and who participate in the survey. We reserve the right to cancel any survey at any time for any reason or no reason."

In other words, not only are you not assured of being "selected" to be paid for the survey, you're giving them permission to mail bomb you.

It gets weirder from here.

There's a "Consumerline" logo at the top of the page






That is linked to: http://64.70.189.35/Consumerline.com but clicking on it doesn't get you far becuase it comes up with:

Not Found

The requested URL /Consumerline.com was not found on this server.

Now the URL at the top of the page is still http://maximumpayjobs.com/ implying Consumerline.com and maximumpayjobs.com are different parts of the same organisation.

This doesn't bother me too much but still I check out the other llinks and find something disturbing. The link to the terms and conditions page is:

http://www.ahwa.org/terms.html

and the privacy policy is at:

http://www.ahwa.org/privacypolicy.html

I'm not a lawyer but it seems to me that if I enter into a commercial agreement with someone the T&C's and privacypolicy should be from the same company.

Best to stay away methinks.




Title quote attributed to H. L. Mencken US editor (1880 - 1956)

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	Posted by: NetScr1be at/ 5/27/2006 12:27:00 AM
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