How to Identify and Avoid Paid Survey Scams

With so many paid survey scams those days, and so many websites promoting those scams, often it is difficult to determine which is real and which is the ugly, especially for survey newcomers. However, there are ways you can identify them and avoid them:

1. Please remember: Never pay anyone to do paid surveys and get paid. Legitimate paid survey sites are always FREE to join and cost absolutely Nothing to take surveys and get paid. If anyone asks you to pay or provide credit card information, walk away!

2. The most common scam sites work like this: They claim they are paid survey sites and ask you to sign up and provide your personal information. They then turn around sell your information. Often those sites are overly simplified, no company information etc, all they ask is your name and email address, and you won't know what's going on until you register. If you see a site like this, walk away.

3. If you come cross a site that you are not sure if it is legitimate or not, please be sure to check their privacy policy. If you are not happy with their policy or they don't have a privacy policy, stay away. A legitimate company's privacy policy should state something like "We do NOT reveal or sell your personal information to any third parties..." in the "How do we use information collected" section.

4. Please be aware the difference between paid surveys sites and paid sign up offer sites. The later sometimes say they are survey sites, in fact they are not. They are the sites you get paid for signing up free or trial offers, and sometimes you need to pay upfront a small fee and provide credit card information to sign up non-free trials or offers.

5. Stay away from the websites promoting known scam "survey" sites - usually those sites promise you make thousands of dollars doing paid surveys, and lot of them claim that they have a free or paid list of 300+ or 400+ paid survey sites (in fact there are not hundreds survey sites that pay! I signed up over 200 sites, but over the course of almost 3 years, only around 70 sites that have paid me or at least send me a survey!)- They are just promoting anything they can find for commission no matter what, and they can NOT be trusted.

6. Trust your instinct - Sometimes you just have a gut feeling about a scam site just by its look and feel. In this case, you are probably right, trust yourself and walk away.

7. You can always do your research for a certain survey site. Fox example, type "A survey site" in Google, you might find "A survey site is a scam!" listed among the top search results!

8. Finally, remember NEVER provide sensitive personal information to anyone, never give out your social security number, driver's license numbers, credit card, bank account information to anyone. I have never has a survey site requires me to provide these information to get paid.

Copyright 2007 Mei Lynn.

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