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Don't Click Here For A Free iPod
Posted by
timothy
on Sun Dec 26, 2004 08:56 PM
from the scam-by-any-other-name dept.
from the scam-by-any-other-name dept.
fermion writes "Do you wonder what all those free iPods links are about? Do you wonder why apparently rational Slashdot users would use their .sig line to push an offer that seems little more than a thinly veiled pyramid scheme? Answers to these questions can be found in this NYT article (personal information, with no free iPod, is required). The plan itself seems simple. Rat out your friends to advertisers, and get a free gadget. The firm in question, Gratis, Inc, gets a bounty on each customer. The firm claims to have a revenue of $15 million in 2004. They claim to give away 500 iPods a week. If, as the article claims, each contact earns a bounty of around $50, we might presume that 1 in 12 contacts get a free iPod. This firm seem fairly upfront. Another firm mentioned in the article, Consumer Research Corporation, seems much less so. As always, read the fine print."
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Read this carefully (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Read this carefully (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the deal is similar here. In the end you're getting a free portable music player (I believe they offer TVs and such, too, right?), but you have to sign up for free trials and things like that. You also have to shamelessly whore yourself out to your friends and family, to rope them into the scheme. Then there's the whole personal information thing the parent mentioned. After months of your own ridiculous marketing, is it really worth it?
Parent
Re:Read this carefully (Score:4, Insightful)
Hence, you can count me in as one of many people to decline this offer. Hope that helps.
Parent
Re:Read this carefully (Score:5, Funny)
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RE: Time is money (Score:5, Informative)
I got through the majority of the thing before I realized it was going to be a huge waste of my time to proceed further. At the beginning, they don't really make it clear that you need to get at least 5 referrals to *sign up for the offers they're emailed* (and I believe, keep them for at least 30 days, too). They make you think that YOU simply have to do so with one (of many) offers you click through, and then give them 5 valid email addresses of friends.
From my browsing through all the "trial offers", I began to realize that almost all are a royal pain in the butt to get cancelled after you sign up. I might be willing to go through the hassle myself, but I sure don't want to make 5 of my friends do so (if I could even get 5 of them to sign up for these offers in the first place!).
I think one of the "simplest" ones to cancel was the offer to sign up with AOL, and as most of us probably already know - that's not usually the easiest thing in the world to cancel. (At the very least, you're gonna be waiting on hold for 20 or 30 minutes until you talk to some cust. service clown who keeps trying to give you more "free hours" rather than just cancel you.)
Worse yet, so many other people already know about these deals, you end up emailing friends who are already trying to get the free iPod themselves.
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Re: Time is money (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Read this carefully (Score:4, Insightful)
You can spam me all you please, if you'll give me a free iPod first.
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Re:Read this carefully (Score:3, Insightful)
I care.
That's why I trade supermarket "coupon" cards whenever I get a chance. It is better than avoiding the cards because trading has the potential to poison the data collection. If I simply refuse, they have a valid data set on those who use the cards (most people). But poisoned data can be dangerous if used as the basis for financial decisions. I'd love it if people made card trading a regula
Re:Read this carefully (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Read this carefully (Score:5, Funny)
Think about it. We'd drive the poor sap crazy that tries to do the actual data mining. "Here he is buying $500 worth of groceries in upstate NY, and 6 minutes later he is buying peanut butter with foodstamps in florida!"
Of course, how long before the cease and desist letter was mailed?
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Re:Read this carefully (Score:4, Insightful)
Most of data mining today answers the mundane questions like "how much more ice cream do people buy when it's hot?" What they're going for is more esoteric links and trends. Things like: if anagama buys lingerie, then buys an EPT test a month later, perhaps they can forecast the demand for EPT tests based on lingerie sales. Or maybe they'll put anagama on a list so that in 9 months they send you coupons for diapers and formula. (BTW, diapers and formula are the holy grail of retail: if they can get new moms to regularly shop at their store for those two items, they believe they have a customer for life. New moms typically harbor good feelings about the places they trust to help provide for their children.)
Data mining is still a very immature process, despite current marketing hype. So far, it's being used experimentally. Walmart is certainly the king of data mining, but even their latest and greatest example was simply to see what people bought before and after hurricane Charley. (Turns out they sold 7 times the usual number of strawberry pop-tarts and beer, so they shipped trucks with extra poptarts and beer to the stores in the projected paths of the rest of the other hurricanes this season.) Again, nothing that couldn't have been done with raw statistics.
Retailers view this data as "gold ore", even though it's a lot more like the Emperor's New Clothes. It's got to be valuable, somehow, it's just that we haven't figured out how to process it yet. The people working on the "customer database" teams are quick to shout "yes, it's valuable" because if they didn't they'd be out of a job. Same with the Sun and Oracle salesmen -- buy this valuable database processing engine and mine for gold (or else I get no fat bonus check, boo-hoo.)
Yes, I am a deeply placed insider who works for a large retailer. I see this stuff all the time, and I know how worthless it's been so far. But it doesn't stop us from trying to mine more data. And it certainly doesn't stop us from collecting it. So go ahead and poison the database it if you want, but there are three reasons why I personally wouldn't bother: first, the number of poisoners is statistically insignificant (good luck changing that). Second, as I mentioned above, the databases are not yielding the gold you might imagine. Finally, I try not to participate in those card gimmicks -- I shop at stores that don't require them.
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Re:Read this carefully (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Read this carefully (Score:5, Insightful)
This said on a web site that constantly talks about open source software. Don't get me wrong, nothing tangible is free, but but its a whole different situation with intellectual property.
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Calculator for the value of your demographics info (Score:5, Interesting)
They suggest you "refer" agencies which collect information about you to this site so you are properly compensated.
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Re:Read this carefully (Score:4, Insightful)
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Because most people WON'T get an iPod (Score:5, Informative)
Okay, so one person hooks up five people, they all sign up (making the company $50 * 6 = $300) and a $249 iPod is sent out to the first guy. Profit so far is $51.
Each of those five hooks up five people for a total of 25 new people, so 25 * 50 = 1250. Five iPods = 1245, not much profit this time.. so this shows that at $50 there's no real profit for the company at each generation, until...
25 * 5 * 5 * 5 * 5 * 5 * 5 * 5 * 5 * 5 * 5 = 2.5 billion.
At this point you've exhausted everyone on the Internet, as you can't sign up more than once. So where's the money?
As in ANY pyramid scheme, the money is in the last generation of the scheme! Free iPods will reach a point where they have several million on their books, and those several million can't find anyone to sign up! So.. several million * 50 = $A LOT OF PROFIT. And those guys won't get an iPod. Cha-ching.
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Re:Read this carefully (Score:5, Funny)
You are an idiot. You can't even karma whore on Slashdot properly.
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Christmas spirit (Score:5, Insightful)
Some people might not mind having their personal browsing or comsumer habits monitored at every turn or click, but I'd rather keep some anonymity. Especially from companies which are quite obviously associated with spamming, and pyramid scheming.
Where this thread is going: (Score:5, Funny)
while we're at it... (Score:5, Funny)
Jerry
http://www.syslog.org/ [syslog.org]
Re:while we're at it... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:while we're at it... (Score:5, Informative)
Start: 1 person.
1 Month: 5 new (6 total)
2 Months: 25 new (31 total)
3 Months: 125 new (156 total)
4 Months: 625 new (781 total)
5 Months: 3125 new (3906 total)
6 Months: 15625 new (19531 total)
7 Months: 78125 new (97656 total)
8 Months: 390625 new (488281 total)
9 Months: 1953125 new (2441406 total)
10 Months: 9765625 new (12207031 total)
11 Months: 48828125 new (61035156 total)
12 Months: 244140625 new (305175781 total)
13 Months: 1220703125 new (1525878906 total)
14 Months: 6103515625 new (7629394531 total)
Since there are only 6,446,131,400 people in the world the scheme cannot continue longer than 14 months. Sadly, those last few months will suck big time (and a few months after because of people who can't do basic math).
Parent
Question (Score:5, Funny)
No, not really.
old news (Score:5, Informative)
Because it actually works... (Score:5, Interesting)
I guess if this company is making money, then not everyone bothers to get out of the offers they sign up for, but even they aren't getting ripped off.
BTW, there have been a few sites that set up referal pools, where people basically just got together and refered each other with the people in the pool.
Re:Because it actually works... (Score:5, Interesting)
No junk mail at my house. No spam. Free iPods.
I'm not complaining.
Parent
Re:Because it actually works... (Score:5, Funny)
Well, thanks for scamming the scammers, scammer. Hopefully "Gratis, Inc." will go out of business as fast as AllAdvantage did a few years ago. If anyone remembers them. :)
Parent
Re:Because it actually works... (Score:5, Informative)
Word of caution: be careful about signing up for credit cards and cancelling them. The number of credit cards you own and have ever owned make up a part of your credit rating. Two credit cards you sign up for and cancel probably aren't going to do much... But if you go to get a mortgage and you've had 20 different cards, it could raise some eyebrows.
Parent
It's not that it's not legit (Score:5, Informative)
The company I work for partners with a lot of these companies, offering one of the things you can sign up for as part of your work toward a free whatever. The companies we work with are legit, but the idiots that sign up for this shit don't read the agreement details and then they wind up getting deluged with legally clear spam, junk mail, and telemarketing.
It's not really free, it's just that you don't pay for what you get with cash. You pay for it with your time. You have to sift through legit spam, junk mailers, hassle with telemarketers who can now legally call you even if you're on the DNC list.
So, hey, if you sign up and didn't read the agreement, too bad. You're an idiot, and you deserve all the crap that you get deluged with. Hope all that extra advertising was worth the free iPod.
Re:It's not that it's not legit (Score:5, Insightful)
Well put. Whether it is "legit" or not is a secondary concern. I don't put much respect towards people who run around spending all their time spamming themselves and friends to get things for free.
I mean, Christ-o-Mighty, We're talking 250-300 bucks here people. Get a job and earn it the old fashioned way. If true wealth were created merely by sending emails to people or by participating in some other pyramid scheme, everybody would be rich and nobody would work again (unfortunately, it would also mean that money grows on trees.) Also, it is an iPod... we're not talking about going to these extremes to feed a family. People are doing it to get a gadget that they can clearly live without.
This is similar to the people who continually sign up for store credit cards to get discounts or "free" gifts. Apparently, they either don't understand or don't care how their credit score is derived. I know people who live their whole lives trying to get freebies. If they spent half that effort improving themselves, I'm sure they'd get a raise, better job, or something.
Parent
Best way to get a free iPod... (Score:4, Interesting)
(I suppose this might be too much "work" for some people, though, plus it doesn't have the fun of selling out your friends to spammers...)
Your milage may vary, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
So far, I've received:
$170 check from a free green xbox offer (now closed)
Xbox, from another free xbox offer. (Anyfreegift)
ipod, from freeipods.com
$700 check, from freelaptops4you.
Only freeipods.com required referrals. The other grand worth of money/stuff didn't. I'm currently working on a deal for a laptop from another site.
Are some of the sites scams? Yeah. But some of them are legit, or close enough for you to get your stuff.
click through (Score:5, Informative)
I did read the fine print a while ago. (Score:5, Informative)
1) The company isn't responsible if you're not ellegible for the free ipod list.
2) The company doesn't guarantee that if you're ellegible, it will send you the free ipod.
3) The company doesn't guarantee that when they send it, it will arrive.
In other words, the company doesn't guarantee A THING.
It's a scam. Just a SPAM frontend.
If anyone (Score:5, Funny)
Re:If anyone (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Wrong site? (Score:5, Funny)
What slashdot have you been reading, exactly?
Something is fishy about all the happy customers . (Score:5, Interesting)
Back in the day, before I went on to better, more mature things, I ran some porn sites. To get traffic, I sent about 100 spams every day by hand to usenet groups using AOL. The spams said they were giving a pirated login/password to a porn site link that was included.
Of course, the web-form that opened was bogus, people could have typed in anything and gotten to the porn. But, thinking it was a stolen password, people jumped on it. I was making 3000 or so a month at the peak, all from the same 100 or so daily usenet spams. For some reason, (maybe guilt?) people who used the "free" password were much much more likely to click on the legit banners in my site.
Eventuanlly, after the the banner affiliate programs got complaints from the usenet police (a singularly dedicated band of activists that have way too much time on their hands) about me, I stopped getting paid. Sluggish AOL even noticed their complaints, and my accounts kept getting turned off. By then I was making much more money at a real job, but the experience a very valuable look at the dark side of net and human psychology.
It would be really interesting to look at how many of these slashdotters posting about how they got a "free iPod" somehow all set-up their accounts in the last couple of hours or so ... Also, those folks with sigs linking to the iPod offer will also have realized the potential this story offers.
I'll stick with my... (Score:5, Funny)
FreeDryerLint.info [freedryerlint.info]
I created this site to put in my sig on various sites after getting annoyed by all the freeipod referal links)
Not really a "scam" ... but... (Score:4, Informative)
All of the information was happily sold off to "3rd party marketing partners" and the list (over 7 million people when I left) was also used for the company's spamming arm, Moxio (or Bonus Bonez, whatever they're calling it now) - you and your referrals all got the spam. Lots of it. If you cancelled your freeflixtix.com account, your referrals (and usually you) still got tons of spam. Your address (email, phone number, AND mailing address) was sold off already.
Yes, people eventually did get some free tickets after jumping through "partner" hoops..some requiring you to keep the "trial" for 2 weeks or more, or to give up MORE personal info & credit card numbers.
It's worse than the "freecreditreport.com" scam that requires you to sign up for Equifax's "Credit Monitoring Service" and more spam.
Is there any way that Slashdot can simply dump any post that has that ponzi scheme as a sig?
Re:It works... (Score:5, Informative)
Know what "exponential growth" means? ;)
Parent
Re:It works... (Score:3, Informative)
Basically you're hoping to screw five suckers who will probably never get a free iPod (or whatever) before the whole idiotic mess collapses. Not very nice.
Re:it's a scam (Score:5, Interesting)
Will it work for absolutely everyone?
-No
Will everyone who signs up get a free ipod?
-Probably not
Did I get a free ipod for less than an hours worth of work?
-Yup
Its not a scam. They make money AND give out "free" ipods.
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Re:I will remember to mod down those suckers (Score:5, Funny)
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And I'll metamoderate that as UNFAIR (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:And I'll metamoderate that as UNFAIR (Score:3, Informative)
If you don't like what you see in signatures, turn signatures off in your Slashdot settings.
I'll second that; I turned off sigs years ago. Further, there is already a system in place to mark when a person is an ass-stick: foe them. Moderating individual articles for some unseen sig offense will likely have me hitting the Unfair radio button as well.
Re:I will remember to mod down those suckers (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:What's _really_ wrong with pyramid schemes? (Score:5, Informative)
And that ain't gonna happen. Sooner or later you will end up in the bottom row. Why?
Because your success depends on the pyramid growing. And the pyramid CAN'T GROW FOREVER. At an geometric growth rate, it requires less than 30 generations to reach the world population. It's like a 30 bit number, but this time bits are base 10 or 12.
This means that sooner or later, the pyramid will experience the so-called "bubble effect". Soon the ones at the bottom will stop generating revenue for you, and this means you'll stop generating revenue for the ones above you, and the pyramid collapses (meaning that the base will always disappear). Then the pyramid becomes VERY narrow and it's like it's started again.
These pyramid schemes are always fraudulent because they promise you an impossible success. It's impossible because the base growth can't be maintained. It happened with Amway, Scientology, and major bible cults. In the end, the base always suffers the worst consequences. And if you were at the base, you'll be again.
The fraud in this case is that you don't get the free ipod INSTANTLY. You need to prove your worth. And that means submitting LOTS of e-mails to spammers. And those aren't even IN the pyramid. They're above it.
And don't tell me that the ad isn't deceptive. Hiding the nasty details in fine print, ON PURPOSE, is one of the greatest frauds in marketing.
In general, the pyramid scheme is evil, because your earnings depend on how many people you abuse or cause to be abused .
Parent
Re:I knew it. (Score:5, Informative)
Not to worry. I won't. Ever.
Slashdot -> Preferences -> Comments -> Disable Sigs
Now if I could only get rid of the excessive whitespace from the HTML-Formatted-But-Don't-Preview crowd, I won't have anything to complain about.
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Re:Read with no registration (Score:5, Insightful)
NYT doesn't require anything, just a unique email address, doesn't even have to be valid. Settle down.
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