My spidey sense started to tingle when I got this spam:
Subject: Your friend Workathomesystem[6194] would like to tell you about the Site
From: HR6194@workathomesystem.org
Date: Sun, November 15, 2009 4:09 am
Hello, my name is Derek Lindsay, and I am the Director of My-Data-Source.com. I
would personally like to invite you to become part of our team doing work-at-home data entry. We have guided thousands of team members to success using our new type of data-entry job called Global Data Entry. Some members are currently making $300 - $2000 and more per day, using our program and guidance. We have been dealing with online data entry for over 7 years. Do you have a few minutes? I will explain more.The Legitimacy of Our Company and the Programs We Offer If you are hearing Data-Entry Jobs before then I would like to make something very clear first. We are NOT a get-rich-quick company. If you are visiting our Web site looking for this type of opportunity then I am sorry to inform you that the programs we offer are not get-rich-quick schemes. We are a legitimate company, offering legitimate work-from-home data-entry job opportunities that have proven success and that we stand behind 100% with our satisfaction guarantee. If you were to ask us the biggest difference between My-Data-Source.com and all of the other work-from-home programs on the Internet, the answer would be this - With My-Data-Source.com, we give you training courses before you could do the the actual job to perform and get paid as we will explain on this page with our newest sources of Data Processing Jobs that pays. We will also provide you other programs that you will find when you became a member and that all you are getting is a list of links to jobs that you will need to apply to. WE ARE PROVIDING TRAINING COURSE AND THE ACTUAL DATA PROCESSING JOBS WITH OUR My-DATA-SOURCE.com TRAINING CENTER AND DATA PROCESSING JOBS THAT PAYS! Join our team, get started with complete instructions and guidance on our program.
Click this link: (snip)
The spam redirects through an affiliate link of
mikepsandersmyd.click2sell.eu after first taking a couple of hops through TinyURL to avoid reporting. Originating IP is 200.46.204.144 in Panama.
My-Data-Source.com is one of those work-from-home programs that you have to pay to join. Is it a scam though? A good place to start is by looking for general advice on this sort of scheme from reputable sources, for example the
BBB,
National Consumer League,
ScamBusters, and
Consumer Direct.
One important thing is to know who you are dealing with - and My-Data-Source.com doesn't mention any real contact details anywhere on their website. The domain was registered to an anonymous registrant on 1st September 2009, so it has only been around for a few months. So, no clue there.. so it is impossible to know who you are actually dealing with.
Another thing to look at are testimonials - you can find these at
www.my-data-source.com/testimonials.php - they all look fantastic, but in fact they turn up for
all sorts of different sites on the web and clearly do not relate to My-Data-Source.com directly.
The so-called testimonials give a clue though - many of these are on "cookie cutter" sites, basically the same site with a different name. That's never a good sign as it looks like someone is trying to hide something. Sites that appear to be largely the same are:
- my-data-team.com
- global-data-entry.com
- mydatateam.net
- earn-clickhere.com
- mydatateamjobs.com
- mydataentryjobs.net
- my-data-source.com
- onlinedataworkjobs.co.uk
my-data-team.com is the longest established of these sites, registered in 2006 to someone called Gary Endres in Concord, California. It does seem to have a verifiable address, but comes with a
poor rating at the BBB. But although the text content is largely the same as My-Data-Source.com, the site layout is different.. but they both have the same testimonials!
onlinedataworkjobs.co.uk takes exactly the content and claims to have been in business for 5 years, although the domain was only registered on 14th May 2009 to a company called "United Service Solutions" (who are not listed anywhere as a UK company) apparently based out of a
flat in Bristol. Doesn't fill you with confidence, eh?
Where it is possible to find a registrant for these sites, then they all appear to be different. So, either they are reselling some else's "work at home" product, or they are just copy-and-pasting content from someone else.
There are very few clues as to the owner of
My-data-source.com except for the name "Mike P Sanders" embedded in the affiliate link. When you try to sign up for program, eBay gives an email address of
mikepsanders@gmail.com
..but here's an oddity, when the domain was originally registered, the registrant was "Lyndon Dave Ardimer"and a straight
Google for that name points to a website called
primemarketers.com which contains a number of ads for various schemes.. including My-data-source.com posted by Mike Sanders. So, is Mike P Sanders actually Lyndon Dave Ardimer? Or it this Derek Lindsay? Or Timothy Darwin (who's name appears on many of these sites)? At this point, the lead vanishes into a mass of affiliate programs and offshore marketers.
So who
is My-Data-Source.com? As you can see, it is difficult if not impossible to determine if there's a real company involved anywhere in this scheme. Should you shell out $50 to join up with a company with no discernible history or physical location? Almost every consumer advice site says that you shouldn't get involved in any type of work-at-home scheme unless you can verify real contact details.. so on that basis, perhaps give this one a miss!
Now, only a complete nutjob would actually follow these instructions. So here's my effort:
