Dec 8, 2009

Google vs Work at Home Scams


Since I blogged about Ebay vs Craigslist, I thought I would score a home run and post about another law suit. This time it is the significant, Google. Randomly enough, It filed its law suit last Monday which is the same time Whitman the former Ebay CEO took stand. Pacific WebWorks was the victim this time along with many unidentified companies. One can imagine the reason behind filing such a suit because of the deceiving behind the fake sources such as articles, website and blogs. I myself was getting interested in one of these and mainly because it was under the name of Google. In the following paragraphs, an in depth discussion of the Google case and the work at home scam will be taking place.

It is a noticeable fact that money is attractive, let alone fast easy money. The work at home scams is one of the most popular successful scams. What is a work at home scam? As quoted from the suit
"This action seeks to stop a widespread Internet advertising scam that is defrauding the public by misusing the famous Google brand. The scam victimizes unsuspecting consumers by prominently displaying the famous Google mark, by suggesting sponsorship by the plaintiff Google Inc., and by urging consumers to obtain a kit supposedly showing them how to make money working from home with Google."
The scammers make money by either asking their victims to purchase an instant access pass or a supposedly cheap kit that will help them generate fast money. After the victims purchase the pass or the kit with their credit card, they also get charged a monthly fee that could be as high as 80 dollars.

Following up the case, Pacific WebWorks has not commented on the suit yet which most likely suggest that Google was right. According to Google search quality engineer, Jason Marrison, Pacific WebWorks is believed to be the head operator of the chain. One of the most effective factors upon the success is not only the Google brand but also the level of persuasion used in these websites. For instance, scammers use fake blogs that contain affectionate success stories and "laughter after suffering" stories; These all trigger the victims to correspond with the pop add or the website. One of the issues worries Google is the enormous number of available scams that limits Google attempts to filter off its search engines. As mentioned earlier, WebWorks has not responded to press yet so a conclusion should not be drawn yet. All we have to do is wait!!!

1 comment:

  1. Very interesting. I just wonder how possibly are they going to prevent scammers of scamming people. I do get hundreds of advertisements like that and it really does drive me nuts. I think in a way it hearts google's name as well. More and more people will connect it with false information.

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