Latest "Get Paid" Scam -- Look2Earn
One thing that never ceases to amaze me about the "Get Paid" world is the huge variety of shady operators involved in it. And the willingness of the masses to remain blissfully ignorant or happily look the other way while pursuing their never-ending quest for "easy money."
The latest scam is a site called Look2Earn. Their claim is simple -- you help them teach their image recognition software and they'll pay you 1 cent for each image you process. The thing is, there is no image recognition software to teach. Instead, they show you a CAPTCHA image from Yahoo and you then pay you for typing it in for them. Why? Because Yahoo uses those CAPTCHA images to stop people from using software to automatically sign up for zillions of free email accounts. These guys get around it by showing the CAPTCHA image to an actual human and paying them 1 cent for inputing the right code. Then they've got themselves a Yahoo email account they can use to SPAM the bejeezus out of all of us.
Pretty clever, isn't it? And the really sad part of it is that a few people figured out what was really going on, and telling everybody what the deal was, a lot of them just don't care. They don't care if they're helping spammers -- their attitude seems to be that there's already so much SPAM out there a little more isn't going to hurt anybody. Another's excuse was that if they quit, other people would just keep doing it, so they might as well keep doing it too so they get a share of the cash.
Honestly, I like to make money online just as much as the next guy. But I'm not going to do seriously skanky stuff like this to do it. There are soooooo many honest ways to earn money online, why do so many people seem to prefer the shady stuff?
The latest scam is a site called Look2Earn. Their claim is simple -- you help them teach their image recognition software and they'll pay you 1 cent for each image you process. The thing is, there is no image recognition software to teach. Instead, they show you a CAPTCHA image from Yahoo and you then pay you for typing it in for them. Why? Because Yahoo uses those CAPTCHA images to stop people from using software to automatically sign up for zillions of free email accounts. These guys get around it by showing the CAPTCHA image to an actual human and paying them 1 cent for inputing the right code. Then they've got themselves a Yahoo email account they can use to SPAM the bejeezus out of all of us.
Pretty clever, isn't it? And the really sad part of it is that a few people figured out what was really going on, and telling everybody what the deal was, a lot of them just don't care. They don't care if they're helping spammers -- their attitude seems to be that there's already so much SPAM out there a little more isn't going to hurt anybody. Another's excuse was that if they quit, other people would just keep doing it, so they might as well keep doing it too so they get a share of the cash.
Honestly, I like to make money online just as much as the next guy. But I'm not going to do seriously skanky stuff like this to do it. There are soooooo many honest ways to earn money online, why do so many people seem to prefer the shady stuff?
<< Home