January 8th, 2009
Spotting Scam Websites
A Cyberworld Full of Fakes
I am almost ashamed to admit that at 40 years old I still maintain a Myspace page. Almost. But anyway, today I noticed a huge ad with a picture of a 20-something cheesy guy claiming to have made over $5000 a month posting links on Google.
It reminded me of those Don Lapre ads on TV back in the day… “I made a fortune placing tiny classified ads..” Of course the people bought that up hook, line, and sinker.. and never researched the scam artist that he was. But that was before the Internet was so prevalent. Nowadays you can find out if someone is the real deal almost instantly. Yet people still fall for the same things over and over.
Back to my cheesy Myspace ad. I clicked on the link, and it was the usual bait and switch site containing endless rambling and bragging, but no actual information or even hints as to what this system could entail. At least he didn’t have a shirtless pic of himself in the Maldives, or photos of his large auto collection (as another scammer I recently saw did).
And then, as if to lend some credibility, there are comments at the bottom – testimonials from satisfied customers of how this amazing yet elusive system made them untold thousands of dollars with barely any effort. Oh, and the picture of an actual check from Google for $5000. And the best part? This AMAZING system only costs $1. Wow, I should jump all over that, right?
Some people certainly do. They don’t bother to think the check was Photoshopped or taken from another site. Or that those testimonials could actually be fake. And about that $1 price? Good luck being bombarded with spam to the email address you have to provide. And heaven forbid they get your phone number. They see that $1 as just an opening to your wallet.
The easiest way for these people to “make money online” is to sell a made-up system to people hoping to make money online! Don’t be one of them.
It makes me wonder how people can really STILL fall for sites like this. But there are people still sending money to Nigeria, and passing around emails that Bill Gates will send them money for forwarding the email around. Hell, there are still people who think they can make money stuffing envelopes. The avalanche of suckers never stops.
Besides the obvious scam-appearance of these sites, I use a simple test to tell when I’m not sure.
First, I use the Alexa plug-in for my Firefox browser. I can immediately tell if a site has any amount of traffic. If a site is unranked, or ranks in the millions, I know it can’t be real. Plus, would you send money to someone telling you how to make money online, when their site only ranks number 2 million on Alexa? I don’t need your help if that’s the best you can do! If you don’t want to use the plugin, just go to Alexa and type the url of the site and see what the ranking is.
Second, I’ll go to Google and put the URL in the search bar. A legitimate site should have quite a few results, not only from their own content, but from others linking to it.
Third, I’ll do a whois lookup on the URL. A site that was created yesterday and has all contacts private is a good candidate for a scam website. Try whois.net before you send any money.
Remember the ad I clicked on at Myspace? His Alexa ranking… unranked. His URL’s Google results… not a single result. His Whois search? The site was created 5 days ago, and all contacts are private.
I wasn’t going to mention the website’s URL, but to anyone researching kevingotcash.com…. do yourself a favor and re-read this article. And if you are reading this “Kevin,” this blog IS ranked on Alexa and I didn’t make $5000 from Google. I don’t believe you did either.