Financial scams and online surveys

Surveys that offer free gifts in exchange for responding to a few questions are either stealing your e-mail address so that they can deluge you with spam or worse, they could be trying to commit identity theft. Consumers should watch out for solicitations of a free Ipod or a valuable gift card from a famed merchant in exchange for spending a few minutes completing a survey online.

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What do you have to lose by responding to a survey offer? The e-mail message may mention some information about how the organization is interested in learning about your shopping tendencies and will pay you for a little bit of your time with a valuable gift. The offer certainly seems tempting when it arrives in your electronic mail inbox - "Get a free Ipod!" or "Get a $250 gift card!", just for completing an online questionnaire.

The "few minutes" of your time can turn out to be many hours of time if you are ready to spend it. Internet promotions that promise gifts, like everything else that seems to be too good to be true, are often financial scams. What about the Ipod? When do you get the gift? The surveys go on and on and on, asking you all kinds of personal questions. Once you think you are done, you find yourself being transferred to another Internet site that asks you to fill out a different questionnaire. Assuming that you have not forgotten about the Ipod while completing endless survey questions, you may discover that ultimately there is no stated way to obtain it and your time has been wasted.
 

Once you provide your e-mail address to the questionnaire company, you will be added to endless spam lists, as the company will absolutely sell your address to anyone and everyone who is willing to pay for it. Your time spent on these questionnaires might hurt you more than you realize. All of these questionnaires are going to request your electronic mail address.

These surveys vary, but quite a few of them will also ask you for personal information, such as your full name, home address and telephone number. If opportunists obtain your personal information from these surveys, you may be up to your eyeballs in debts you did not even know of, as the unscrupulous individuals spend tens of thousands of dollars in your name. A few surveys may ask you to provide a bank card number, perhaps to pay for mailing costs. These surveys could cause your credit report to become littered with bad debt, all run up by the opportunists that stole your personal or financial information. If you provide personal or financial information, you have put yourself in a position to be a victim of identity theft. By giving out your electronic mail address, your name, home address and charge card card number, the criminals who are conducting the survey have everything they need to go out and open new accounts or take out loans or mortgages in your name.

It will take you many months, if not a decade, to straighten out the mess. These online surveys promise a lot, but they are nothing but trouble. While you try to clean up your credit record, you will have additional problems as you attempt to apply for loans or mortgages or acquire credit cards.