YP MEDIA – Making Money Online – Reality or Just Another Scam?

We’ve seen them a million times – annoying pop up ads, spam emails, and flashing banners claiming that you can make $2000 a week in the comfort of your own home with only a few hours of effort. Is this true? Is it really possible to make over $100,000 a year with a few clicks of the mouse? Well if you believe that, then I have a bridge I can sell you.   However, the recent rise in the number of “Make Money Online” blogs leaves one to wonder just how much money, if any, really can be made online. So I decided to do a little social experiment. I call it Buzz My Blog.

Buzz My Blog documents my personal adventure into the world of Internet Marketing and Making Money Online. The original intent was to provide an honest and personal account of my real-life experience starting a blog from scratch and growing it into a successful and profitable web site. I did not want to create another one of those Get Rick Quick sites or annoying blogs that pushes this product or that product just to make a couple bucks. Instead, my goal was to provide an informative and interesting discussion of what works and what doesn’t, sharing every detail along the way. Readers could follow along, contribute comments and suggestions, and learn as I learn, ways to improve and eventually profit from their blog.

In less than a month, I have learned quite a bit about what it takes to build a successful blog. Buzz My Blog has grown quickly and has seen a good number of visitors – some who actually return regularly. It is emerging as an informative and collaborative online community where fellow bloggers can learn and discuss ways to make their blog more successful. I have met a number of other bloggers that share a similar interest in the topic and we learn from each other (along with our readers). Most importantly, I have learned that it is, in fact, possible to make money from your blog. However, unlike the potential scams that end up in your Junk Mail folder every day, it cannot be done with little effort. It takes hard work, dedication, persistence, and a commitment to provide relevant and interesting content on a frequent basis. This is not an easy thing to do.

Do you have a blog? If so, I invite you to come along and join me on this journey. Buzz My Blog has barely earned more than a few cents so far, but I am on my way. Surprisingly, I am finding the journey just as rewarding as the ultimate destination. Sure, I hope it makes some good money eventually. And if it does, you’ll know exactly how!

YP MEDIA – Social Media Needs to Kick its Scam Addiction

Yes, I said it. Everybody involved knows it. It’s the dirty little secret of social media ecosystem. Log onto Facebook, MySpace, or any social application on these platforms or anywhere else. The majority of the ad units you see are for scam related offers. The infamous “crush ads” are everywhere. The whole purpose of these ad units is to get the consumer to enter their cell phone number and usually without realizing it subscribe to a monthly subscription on their mobile phone.

These ads are so profitable that they usually outbid any other advertisers on any network. If Google was not fiercely combating them, the would take over the overall online advertising universe. The actually come in a very few formats that I am sure you have noticed them

• Crush Ads: Someone has a crush on you!
• IQ ads: What is your IQ?
• Age Ads: How old are you really?
• and a few more “creative” ones

What percentage of ads on social media are composed of these scams you might wonder. According to insiders in multiple ad networks, it is as high as 70% of their revenue! Basically if you are monetizing your product through social ad networks, your business is probably being financed by scam ads.

We learned this very quickly when we were running social ads on Zoosk last year. First sign was when we started getting complaints from users that we should stop charging their cellphones. But Zoosk didn’t have any mobile features at the time. Once the volume of these complaints got to a level above noise, we did a few follow ups and quickly learned that these users were tricked by the scam ads to give out their cellphone numbers and not knowingly they were being charge on a monthly or sometimes biweekly basis for something around $10!

We tried to block these advertisers manually from our apps, but it turns out that if your ad network doesn’t fight them it is very hard for the publisher to effectively block them. We knew that we would be getting lower eCPMs by doing so, but we decided to switch from all the known social ad networks for basically this reason.

At the same time I understand why these up and coming ad networks can’t afford to remove these advertisers from their networks. Publishers flock to highest paying network on a whim and if a network drops 70% of their revenue, it will certainly die. Only Googles of this market can afford to fight these guys hard. I must give Facebook credit. They at least try to block these advertisers through their “ad policies” and even though I don’t agree with their method of combating these guys, at least they try.

What about publishers? Properties such as Zoosk that manage to directly monetize consumers have an easier way of turning down higher eCPM payouts by cutting scam ads (which I am super happy about . However, if advertising is your main revenue stream, it is very hard to turn down the higher eCPMs.

That being said, I want to argue that publishers should fight the urge to stay dependent on such ads for their own long-term livelihood. These ads and companies behind them won’t last long term. In many countries around the world consumer have finally been able to fight these scams. Over the past two years consumer rights groups have been able to pressure phone carriers to not allow these offers to operate on their network. As you can imagine carries play a very tricky role in this whole game. They don’t mind the revenue generated by these offers (sometimes they get half of the payout on these offers) but also don’t want to be known for supporting scams. And they have started to give in to the pressure from consumer rights groups. Even china recently passed laws that make the life for the companies behind these offers so hard that most of them have completely disappeared. I am sure US carriers will do so in the next 12-18 months as well.

Once 70% of revenue of ad networks disappears due to legislation or carrier policy change social media publishers relying on these advertisers will see a significant drop in their eCPMs (remember when Facebook forced Social Media and Cubics to clean their act to some extent last year? first effect was slashing eCPM rates). If your company is addicted to such incomes and hasn’t worked “harder” to figure out better ways to monetize you will be in a very grim situation once the plug is pulled. Not to mention that you would be doing your customers a big favor by saving them from these notorious scam techniques on the web today.

So what do you say Social Media publishers? Let’s fight these scams to both protect our users and also build companies that can outlast scammers.

YP MEDIA – Cyberscams Befriend Social Networks

Now fraudsters may log on as your “friend.” How Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social networking sites are fighting a rise in scams

Remember the associate of that deposed dictator who needed your help transferring a few million dollars from a Swiss bank account? Well, he’s back. And he—or one of his ilk—may show up soon posing as your “friend” on Facebook.

Someone bearing an eerie resemblance to those ubiquitous perpetrators of so-called Nigerian scams ended up in the online social network of Australian citizen Karina Wells. Earlier this month Wells received a message on Facebook from someone she thought was her real-life friend Adrian. He wrote that he was stranded in Lagos, Nigeria, had no access to a phone, and needed Wells to wire $500 for a plane ticket home. “Adrian” even pleaded for help in a real-time conversation over Facebook’s chat service.

Wells didn’t buy it. She alerted Australian authorities and Facebook, each of which is conducting an investigation. Although the details have yet to be confirmed, Facebook officials believe someone obtained Adrian’s log-in credentials through a “phishing” scheme, luring him to a dummy site where he was asked to enter his Facebook password. The incident was initially reported by the Sydney Morning Herald and later confirmed by BusinessWeek.com.

Wells thwarted the apparent ruse, but officials and security experts warn such scams may become more common in an online world where millions of people interact daily, often sharing intimate details with widening circles of friends.

“Implied Trust”

While e-mail is still the most common online method used by scam artists to contact potential victims, fraudsters are increasingly turning to Web pages, a category that includes social networks, according to the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center. Last year the total amount of money reported lost through Internet crime in the U.S. rose 21%, to a record $239 million, according to those agencies. The victim was contacted through a Web page in 32.7% of those cases, up from 16.5% in 2005. Social networks are partly to blame for the increase, officials say. “There is an implied sense of trust, and there’s not the sense that we can be physically harmed,” says Shawn Henry, assistant director of the FBI’s Cyber Investigations division.

Social networks are also more ubiquitous, Henry notes. “Many [criminals] have now moved to computer networks because that’s where the victims have moved and, therefore, the opportunities.” According to comScore (SCOR), the number of unique visitors to all social networking sites worldwide reached 689 million in October, up 35% from a year earlier.

It’s not difficult for a savvy Web surfer to impersonate someone else in cyberspace, as a high-profile cyber-bullying trial now under way plans to show. On Nov. 18 jury selection began in a federal court in Los Angeles for the case of Lori Drew, who prosecutors say passed herself off as a teenage boy in a widely publicized case of impersonation on a social networking site. Two years ago 13-year-old Megan Meier hanged herself after receiving messages from “Josh,” an older boy she had befriended on News Corp.-owned (NWS) MySpace, who allegedly later told her that the world “would be better off” without her. According to prosecutors, an investigation ultimately revealed that “Josh” was a fictitious online persona of multiple people, including Lori Drew, the mother of one of Meier’s teenage rivals. Drew now faces one count of conspiracy and three counts of accessing computers without authorization.

Fooling Security Experts

A pair of online security industry consultants carried out an experiment recently to demonstrate just how easy it is to masquerade as someone else on LinkedIn. Shawn Moyer of FishNet Security and Nathan Hamiel of Idea Information Security got permission from a friend to set up a phony profile page on the networking site aimed at professionals. Together, they posed as Marcus Ranum, a consultant renowned for building the first e-mail server for whitehouse.gov and who now serves as chief of security for Tenable Network Security. Moyer and Hamiel used Ranum’s name, résumé, and photo (all of which they found on the Web without any help). Moyer and Hamiel then set about seeking to connect with chief security officers and chief information officers of large companies, an editor-in-chief of a security trade magazine, defense industry professionals, and other people whom Ranum might know in real life.

YP MEDIA – The rise of the social network media scam

As the web becomes more social, the usual bullshit scams, deceit and outright lies have to run the gauntlet of a thousand million eye balls. But like all good pathogens, new vectors for infection must and will be found — but at one what cost to the host?

Between 1348-49, England was besieged by an invader that took no prisoners, killing all in its path, be they young children, women, or the old. This accursed marauder was responsible for the deaths of almost 70% of England’s population, some estimates placing that figure at around 5 million people.

The enemy wasn’t a race of people, but a species of bacterium called Yersinia pestis, otherwise known as Black Death. Theories vary, but one concerns a benign origin for Yersinia pestis, in countries with warmer climates and people wearing less clothing. Here, transmission is as simple as skin-to-skin contact. However, in the more temperate north, we wear more clothes, which reduces direct skin contact. A new approach is required. And to be sure of infecting the host, the bacteria had to be more potent.

Does this all sound familiar? Of course it does. Humans are ingenious, but for the most part, we merely ape what Mother Nature has since perfected; a biological arms race.

In our world, such examples can be found in advertising: whereby advertisers have to find newer and more innovative ways of reaching the ever-increasing disinterested masses; and the battle between computer virus writers and anti-virus software developers.

From disease to direct message

Only recently, Twitter was the subject of a social scam that involved one person’s profile being compromised, which then sent out a direct message to their followers, encouraging them to click on a link, taking them to a website, asking them to enter their username & password .. and so on and so forth.

These scams can be, predictably, rather successful. However, because Twitter is a social network populated with plenty of tech’ savvy people, the message got around even more quickly and the whole thing died off.

This begs a very important question: what if this social scam had started on MySpace? Where the savviness of your average member is a degree or two lower.

What we do know is, social scams have traction, because certain tricks will always work. But because people are now able to react quickly, the amount of time these scammers have to hit pay dirt is substantially less.

As luck (or should I say, bad luck) would have it, Google’s Gmail service encountered serious problems earlier today, which sent ripples of displeasure and frustration throughout the world. However, one man’s misfortune is often another man’s gain. In this case, while Google dealt with their Gmail outage, someone created a Google Group for porno:

“… someone hacked the created a Google Groups page on Gmail (link NSFW) at the worst possible time, adding images that leave nothing to the imagination as well links to adult content elsewhere on the net on top of the page … this is not an official Google group but a user-generated one most likely deliberately set up now to take advantage of the fact Google has other things on its mind right now than checking up and moderating new groups on the subject of Gmail.”

This is opportunism at its very best. With every Gmail user in a blind panic, many would have gone in search of an update on Google. So what’s the most common search term likely to be? “Gmail down”, which happened to be the title of our porn-infested Google Group. Genius.

The evolution of the social exploit

The next logical step is for someone to emulate the Twitter scam, but sending out links to websites full of advertising. Doing this on a large enough scale would reap serious rewards, within the short time before word got out.

But let’s step a little further into the future, to a point where the amount of time the scammers have available to them is even shorter. Here’s where they need to make money faster. The benign infection must now work harder and become more virulent and possibly more harmful.

We already have many thousands of PCs that are infected, acting as invisible armies, armed and ready to attack servers anywhere in the world. So the stage is certainly set and all the players are in place.

If the means to prevent a social scam is our ability to communicate the source and nature of the attack via our social network, might these standing armies of “zombie” PCs be used to attack and then compromise the social network itself, controlling the ebb & flow of the very information we’re using to disrupt the attack?

Who knows. But what we also know is, as quickly as the diseased social scammers score their success, the collective host will react with equal or greater force to repel the next attack…