1. Survey Scams Sam Roberts

2. What is a Survey Scam?  A scam where someone asks you to fill out a survey answering personal question, business questions, or personal information in general and they offer a reward or money for filling out the survey.  Many of these kinds of surveys are fraudulent and the rewards are fake and the money is just to get your bank account and information.

3. Why People Use Survey Scams  Online surveys are one of the fastest growing market research tools. Companies like them because they're quick, easy and cheap to do.  In fact, we use online surveys to find out what our subscribers want to know.  Scammers love online surveys because it's also easy to trick people into handing over money or personal information in the belief they're going to be paid for taking part.  For legitimate companies, the growth of the Internet gives them much more direct and immediate access to customers. We're all familiar with those pop-ups that appear on web pages we visit, asking for our opinions.  It's not unusual either to get a survey request in your email inbox from a company that you've been doing business with. It could be about anything from product satisfaction and customer service to future buying plans.

4. Cont’d  Paid online surveys generally don't offer payment but you need to maintain a healthy caution with them anyway -- mainly just to be certain they come from who they say they're from and to ensure (by having up-to-date Internet security software) that any links they provide don't install malware on your PC.  But the trouble really starts when you sign up to take surveys in the belief you'll get paid, by responding to a spam message or online ad.

5. At their most basic, home online survey scams : are usually a front for one of four tricks:  Getting you to pay money for nothing. It'll be a payment for a useless training kit or a fee for "membership" of a club or organization that promises to pass details to you of upcoming paid surveys.  Getting hold of your name and other details (like income, education etc), which will then go on to a spamming list. You won't get any survey forms but you will be bombarded by offers, either from the company you first contacted or by other marketing companies to which they sold your details.  Using your personal details, acquired in either of the above survey scams, for identity theft. Survey scam artists can draw up a fairly comprehensive picture of you from the details you provide, especially if you've also given credit card or bank details to pay them for their service.  A cover for an advance fee scam, in which you're sent a fake payment check for taking part, then asked to wire part of your "payment" to someone else.

6. Examples of Scams  I filled out a survey online just for fun and look what I’m sent everyday…

7. Solution?  The only real and efficient solution to stopping survey scams, and staying away from them, is ignoring pop ups, not clicking on them, and not filling out information from illegitimate sites.  Don’t give out your contact information except to legitimate companies and for legitimate purposes only.  http://jobsearchtech.about.com/od/jobs/ a/paid_surveys_2.htm http://jobsearchtech.about.com/od/jobs/ a/paid_surveys_2.htm