An Experiment in Online Fraud Schemes

Lets see how this pans out...

Published on July 27, 2004 By Zoomba In Websites

I've seen all of these "free XYZ if you refer X people" offer sites before, but I've never actually given one a shot. I'm curious now if this one is real at all. The deal is refer a bunch of people to the site and you get a free iPod. So, if you have a spam mail account (like hotmail) or something you can toss into this sign-up form, it'd be appreciated. I'd like to see how this all works out. If you do sign-up, leave a comment below saying so...

Here's the link

http://www.freeiPods.com/default.aspx?referer=7440102

I'll update with further information as (if) I receive it. Hopefully if everything doesn't just vanish off into the ether, I can get an idea of how this particular scheme works.

I figure the JU community can help me figure this one out.

Comments

rokknroll

on Jul 27, 2004

Fraid i dont have aspam a/c, but afaik, these things are basically harvesters that ppl opt into without knowing what they are doing. I believe they are called matrix schemes (as opposed to pyramid), and i never ever heard of anyone getting the iPod (or Xbox, or Sony Vaio). The best profit to be made is on ebay selling the link to the site, which you see so many poor ppl doing its not even funny.

chiprj

on Jul 27, 2004

I actually went through the sign up for this and put in five email addresses but the next step is that you have to take part in one deal from a list of offers AND at least five of your referrals have to take part in one of the deals, too. I gave up at that point. Most of the deals are suck you in deals - easy to get in, hard work to get out. I'm not going to ask anyone to go that far for me to maybe get an ipod (who knows what other requirements come up after completion of these). It's just not worth it to me.

But good luck with it. You may be able to get some family members or friends to do the minimum in order for you to meet the requirements. Let us know if you're successful. It might change my mind if you are.

Zoomba

on Jul 27, 2004

I've done the ebay offer as it's the least offensive of the available options (I just created a second ebay account). They say it will take several days for the offer to credit to my account. I'm waiting to see what happens next in terms of spam that will come spewing into my gmail box.

Lets see how things go...

Zoomba

on Jul 28, 2004

The spam has already begun... 2 spam mails within an hour of signing up.

Welcome Guest! Please take the time to register with us.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:

Richer content, access to many features that are disabled for guests like commenting on the forums.
Access to a great community, with a massive database of many, many areas of interest.
Access to contests & subscription offers like exclusive emails.
It's simple, and FREE!