Today’s post concerning the “Make money from home with Google” pop-ups that seem to be more and more common while people are surfing online recently has 2 reasons behind it. (1) I have been asked by numerous people if its legit (its a SCAM and lets just say way more people than I ever would imaged have asked) and (2) I am running into this ad pop-up daily now, while I’m online and accessing major sites.
Here is a screenshot I took of one of these ad pop-ups that I got while accessing a Major National Newspaper site. You probably have seen this or something similar to this if you spend much of any time online. Let me say it one more time, before going on with this post “THIS IS A SCAM”.
(http://houstontribune NULL.net/business/work_from_home/)
Not only do you get the ad telling you that Google will pay you to work from home, but when you try and close it you get the following pop ups.
“Skeptical…..” Any ad that requires it to tell me that I shouldn’t be skeptical and that my financial security will only cost me $1 should be an instant alarm for everyone to not just walk away but run away as quickly as possible. (IMPORTANT NOTE: AT THIS POINT USE THE X ON THE TOP RIGHT, DO NOT USE THE OK BUTTON TO CLOSE IT)
“Are you sure” is the next window you will get, really people, if being told are you sure, then told are your really sure, about anything should be an alarm. (NOTE: AGAIN USE THE X ON THE TOP RIGHT, DONT CLICK EITHER OK OR CANCEL)
Oh and for good measure now you will get another pop-up ad that looks like a legit news site (I appears that it will say either from the “Houston Tribune News” or from “News8News”). The sites are very real looking as they use parts from actual websites (Note the Electronic Cigarette story that comes from News8, but that news 8 is actually WFAA which is an ABC TV station not the fake news8news that has nothing to do with any legit website.)
Part of the problem with these sites are that they are now finding ways to appear long side legit sites, and on top of that they refer to actual stories (like the WFAA story) or claim to be “As seen as” and use major legit news sites (There is a very legit . Additionally, the problem is that they use very similar names to actual sites, so that the average user gets confused.
ABC News did a story about this issue recently (A few Quotes from the ABC story)
“But the affiliations suggested by the site were questionable at best: It said that customers would earn cash "working from home with Google," even though Google says it does not endorse such work-from-home sites.
It also claimed that it had been featured by television news organizations, including ABC News and CNN.
Both organizations say they haven’t endorsed the site. The site’s only real connection to legitimate news organizations, experts say, seems to be through paid advertisements placed on those organizations’ Web sites.”
The complete ABC news story about this can be found at (LINK) http://abcnews.go.com/Business/work-home-google-scam/story?id=8438110&page=1 (http://abcnews NULL.go NULL.com/Business/work-home-google-scam/story?id=8438110&page=1)
So just remember a couple of Internet Golden Rules
– Even if its on the internet, it doesn’t mean that its true
– Even if it looks like the Tweet, Facebook link, Email, IM, or any other form of online communications looks like it came from someone you know, its possible that it wasn’t sent by them. Always be very careful when clicking on links.
– No job/job search or anything concerning “financial security” should cost you money to get. As soon as anyone says “Pay me X amount, and I’ll tell you how to be make money or be debt free”.
An additional resource to see if something is a scam is (LINK) snoops.com (http://snoops NULL.com). Snoops has more info on this fake work at home scam as well. (LINK: http://www.snopes.com/fraud/employment/google.asp (http://www NULL.snopes NULL.com/fraud/employment/google NULL.asp))