BBB Warns Against Twitter Scams

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Better Business Bureau Warns Against Slimy Twitter ScamsJuly 7th, 2009

by Adam OstrowComments

Twitter spam has been an increasingly hot topic lately, as scammers try to game Twitter’s highly visible trending topics. Unfortunately, a lot of that spam originates with classic “Make Money from Home” type promotions, luring in inexperienced Web users that are desperate to make a few extra dollars.

Today, the Better Business Bureau (BBB) is out with a warning against such scams, calling out a number of specific websites who sell programs that promise riches in the land of Twitter. Like a lot of other scams, they advertise huge income for doing very little work. Unfortunately, however, the only person typically making any money is the one selling the instructional CD-ROMs or e-books to unsuspecting users hoping to cash in on Twitter’s current wave of popularity.

For example, here’s the description of one of the scams cited by BBB:
“The e-mail links to EasyTweetProfits.com, a company out of Surrey, England.

EasyTweetProfits.com claims you can make $250-$873 a day working at home with Twitter. The Web site offers a seven-day free trial of their instructional CD-ROM for $1.95 to cover shipping. Buried in the lengthy terms and conditions are the details that the trial begins on the day the CD is ordered—not when it is received—and if the consumer doesn’t cancel within seven days of signing up, they’ll be charged $47 every month.”

Similar programs mentioned by BBB include Make-money-on-twitter.com and TwitterProfitHouse.com, which also end up billing the person that orders the program perpetually until they cancel. In addition to spamming users via email to gain sign ups, these scams also have been known to spread through Twitter itself. BBB warns “the links in such tweets could lead you to scam sites or install malware onto your computer.”

The bottom line seems to be the same on Twitter as everywhere else: if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Nonetheless, it’s good to have BBB jumping onto the potential for Twitter to be exploited by slimy marketers relatively quickly to protect consumers.
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