I did another interview a couple weeks ago about all the scams and get-rich-quick schemes using Google’s name and logo to fool people. Here’s the article at MSNBC, take a look.
Here’s a pretty good quote that sums up the scammers pretty well:
“They prey on people who are desperate,” says Ohio truck driver Robert Anderson, who fell for a home-based job opportunity that appeared to be from Google. “They make money by lying to people, promising them the world and giving them a guarantee they have no intention of honoring.”
I don’t have much more to add except that this sort of thing is showing up everywhere – email spam, spam accounts on Twitter, various ad networks, etc. Much of it is automated but the profit margins are high enough that they can afford to have actual people creating accounts, solving captchas, etc. so any company getting spammed with these schemes has to take a proactive approach.
As Shipwreck so presciently explained in 1985, the other half of the battle is knowing. Please feel free to send this article, or the one from ABC, or the Google Blog post around to any friends and family wondering about making money online. The truth is, may people make money with their websites, but it takes hard work. There’s no secret kit that returns cash with no effort and no investment.
I have been scammed by the same company who says listing web addresses for google. They didn’t get a whole lot of money from my checking account because I haven’t much. I had to close it to get them to stop. My bank was no help at all (wachovia). What I can’t understand is why big supposedly reputable companies like Msn and Nbc are letting them advertize it tants thier credability in my eyes also now.