We’ve been reporting on many of the fake blog and fake news site scams here at the Electron Plumber over the past couple of months and they just keep coming and coming, changing their names every once in a while in an effort to appear new and different. At first and sometimes second glance, they appear to be legitimate news or blogs sites describing how you can earn money at home posting links for Google part time.
Want to know exactly what the Easy Google Profit scheme is, how the people advertising it are making money off it, and what will hopefully eventually happen when the government finally catches up with them? Read on!
First, go take look at our article on the Los Angeles Tribune News site by clicking here. It gives you some background on some of the fake news sites that are used to promote Easy Google Profit. Next take a look at our article on the earn easy money Google Biz Kit. I’ll wait here for you until you get back…
A hallmark of these earn online with Google sites is lots of testimonials from people supposedly earning money online to the tune of $5000-$10,000 a month, all from working part time posting links for Google. Enough to entice most average Americans with dreams of quitting their job, earning more money working at home for themselves and spending more time with the loved ones, but not so much as too seem completely unrealistic.
Ok, now you understand that it’s certainly a scam in our opinion and that they trick you into thinking you’re only paying $1 until suddenly your credit card is whacked for $77.83 or some other odd amount?
So how does it work exactly and how the heck do they get away with this?
Easy Google Profit Ads
First, lets track it back a little. Start at the beginning. You likely ended up here because you saw an Ad somewhere which linked to a fake blog or fake news site (hopefully you noticed it was fake). Hopefully you had to thought to do a quick search on the blog or Easy Google Profit scam to see if the offer was legit or not. The most common places we’ve seen and heard of these ads are Facebook, MySpace, Google, Yahoo, and Time.com. Someone is spending tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertising a month on this stuff, and tricking more and more people every day. The advertiser likely isn’t the offer creator either…
The people doing the advertising are internet marketing affiliates who make a large commission for every person they can drive to the site who ends up giving up their credit card for a “free” trial. There are many affiliate networks out there, some good and some not so good. I belong to many of them, most to find offers to run. There are the top names like Commission Junction and Amazon, a number of big networks like AzoogleAds, ShareASale and NeverBlue, and then lots smaller third tier programs like Direct Agents. Funny story, we’re joined over 20 affiliate networks and so far only Direct Agents has “rejected” our application from The Electron Plumber with no explanation. We can only guess that sketchy offers like Easy Google Cash and the like are mainstays of their revenue.
So the creator of blazingkeywords.com (which is basically what you are buying through Easy Google Profits) likely pays affiliates in the $30-40 range PER PERSON they drive to the securecartcenter.com site and get to enter in their credit card number. So the affiliate pays the advertising cost, and the site owner pays the cost of hosting and the service to field all the angry customers who didn’t realize they were paying $75+ after 7 days rather than $1.97. Oh, and the cost of lawyers when the FTC catches up with them…
Is blazingkeywords.com and Earn Google Profit Breaking the Law?
We aren’t lawyers here at The Electron Plumber, nor do we pretend to be. However, the FTC has the following to say on the matter:
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/business/ecommerce/bus41.pdf
and
http://www.ftc.gov/os/2009/02/P064202negativeoptionreport.pdf
Don’t have time to download and read them? The main points:
- The same consumer protection laws that apply to commercial activities in other
media apply online. - Disclosures that are required to prevent an ad from being misleading, to ensure
that consumers receive material information about the terms of a transaction or
to further public policy goals, must be clear and conspicuous. - Display disclosures prior to purchase, but recognize that placement limited
only to the order page may not always work. - It’s the advertiser’s responsibility to draw attention to the required disclosures.
There is certainly an argument here that none of the above four criteria are being met, both for the companies running the various Google Money offers and for the affiliates pushing them.
The likely outcome? There have been similar types of cost hiding legal actions in the past, some notable ones:
- Azoogle Ads “donating” $1 million to the Florida to settle a case regarding deceptive advertising of “free” ringtones that had similar monthly charges attached.
- Think All Publishing settling for $2.1 million in similar charges regarding deceptive $1.99 shipping offers with high hidden monthly charges. See http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2008/06/manay.shtm.
Note that something similar will go on here. Eventually the FTC will get around to these guys and take them down, allow them to “settle” if they pay back what they took from people, and have them likely flee to their offshore tax haven with the money they snuck out.
How To Cancel Easy Google Profit and Blazingkeywords.com Monthly Charges?
Well, they do provide a phone number you can call. The number to cancel is 1-888-258-9765. HOWEVER, a number of people have suggested that calling their number is not the right thing to do.
If you call to cancel, they now have a record of you contacting them and if you later try to dispute the charge with your credit card company, they can show the record of your call to your credit card company as proof of the transaction. Only go this route if you can’t afford to cancel the card in question.
Here is what we recommend:
- Don’t feel bad! Seems like hundreds if not thousands of people have been taken in by these sort of “negative option” offers that trick you by not clearly disclosing you are signing up for monthly charges. You were tricked, it happens to the best of us.
- Call/write your credit card company and report the card stolen. This will make sure they can’t charge you any more and that they can’t sell your credit card number to anyone else. If they tricked you once already, what makes you think they won’t try to squeeze every penny out of you they can?
- Start ID theft monitoring right away! Click here to sign up for Experian Protect My Id monitoring. You just gave some shady characters your name, address, phone number, credit card and secret 3 digit card number. You can get Experian ID Protection for free for 30 days, then it’s $9.95 a month. I’d suggest signing up for AT LEAST the free month to check your credit report for free and make sure no one tries to change your address or open a new card using the current cards details you gave away.
I Didn’t Get Taken, But What Can I Do To Help?
Wh can you do to stop these guys from taking in more people? Warn everyone about it!
- Click Here to Share this on Facebook! Hit “Post to Profile” to warn your friends.
- Use the “Share This” link below to Digg or Stumble or Reddit or Email or whatever service you use to share this so that other people might see it before they get scammed too!
- Click Here to ReTweet this article to warn all your faithful followers.
But I Wanted To Make Money Online, Not Get Scammed! Is There Anything Real Out There?
Yes, there are many people who earn a living working at home sitting in front of their computer. And you can actually be one of them! Check out our article on The Best Way To Learn To Make Money Online
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Another link making the rounds is “www,ArticleCar,cn” – It appears that the pages may even change based on your IP (I assuming) in an effort to make it more believable and legit. For example the URL I have posted takes me to a page called “The Ontario Financial Journal” and the girl in the article is apparently from “Hamilton, Ontario” and as you can imagine, I live in Hamilton, Ontario.
Of course it all sounded to good to be true. After a quick search to see what The Ontario Financial Journal actually was and not being able to find anything on the internet, I searched Easy Google Profit, found your site, this article and saw your comment about posting the URL, so here I am.
If nothing else, this scam brought me here. I’ve now bookmarked your site and I look forward to reading on. Thanks for the heads up.
Looks like they are somehow hacking into Facebook accounts and sending out the following link: “www,ArticleGet,cn I heard some ppl in my family talkin about this during Thanxgiving. Check it out” (posted exactly as it appeared in a post from a friend on my Facebook). The URL doesn’t give any clues but googled Easy Google Profit (which is what the link is about) and found your comments and several others. Hopefully will be able to spread the awareness a bit more and stop people being caught by this type of scam
Thank you for the useful information!
How i register to earn money
Yesiree I was scammed. I’m still working on it. The link I got was from the Google home page. It seems Google doesn’t proof-read the ADS very well or they might have questioned the content of this AD. In any event I went for the $1.97 Postage and Handling route with a 14 day “free trial”. Subsequent to that I did some checking and found out that they were not affiliated with Google. I called the cancellation number and was assured I would be credited within 3-5 business days. I was debited $99.00 today 11/23. It will post tonight. “Google For Profit” hasn’t returned my phone call of course and I havent received my “product”.
Tomorrow I go to St. Paul Capital to file a complaint against an unknown perpetrator.
USBANK said they couldn’t help me until the charge went through.
Be warned. ALWAYS do your homework first before buying anything online from an unknown source. This is the first time I have been scammed and I was tricked by the Google name. Hope it won’t be the last time.
Bob,
Done. Check it out here http://electronplumber.com/tycoon-cashflow-legit-or-scam/
hey El Plumber since we are on the topic of scams can you make a post talking about Tycoon Cashflow? I want to know some things about it. Is it for real or a scam?
Oh, we’ve done that. The problem is the URLs change by the hour. We cannot keep up with them as fast as Google can. Plus as soon as we report them, their account is frozen or canceled, which makes us feel better.
You don’t need to wait for Google to block them, just go to your AdSense Setup > Competitive Ad Filter and enter the offensive URL in the box.
Anyway, a friend of mine was a victim of those scammers, but not in the way you describe. They hacked into her Facebook account and sent fake messages to all her “friends”– including myself – presumably from her and with a link to a fake newspaper article praising this Google scam. She had to cancel her account and write everybody to tell them to ignore the message.
Yeah Gina, we rely on Google Adsense to filter these kinds of scam ads out, but sometimes some sneak through the Google net. If you see any on there, please just copy and paste the URL of the ad into a comment and we’ll report it to Google right away. They are very good about blocking them once they are reported.
Thanks!
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