Scams and cons

Another dubious distinction at Freelancing and More

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Another dubious distinction at Freelancing and More

Sometimes it’s fun to write about milestones that one hits on their blogs. In fact, I recall briefly writing a post when I hit the 500 posts written mark and wasn’t sure what to do next. I also wrote about the number of subscribers to this blog (which is pathetic to say the least).   But today, I have another dubious distinction to report. Remember those spam comments? Over the last six months or so, I’ve reported many spammers who have placed countless comments on this blog and even called some of them out by name.   There was Kizi Games, there…

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Moving targets: A scam is a scam

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Moving targets: A scam is a scam

Today, I decided to have some fun.  Theresa Andrews has been a target ever since I put up the Partner with Paul review several months ago. In fact, this one search term has generated almost 4500 hits on that blog post! However, there were a couple of names that kept surfacing in my Email and when doing “work at home” searches, namely Kelley (or Kelly) Richards and Melissa Johnson. I had to go and look for these names and see what happened.  What did happen turned out to be pretty amusing.  Now, you remember my writing about Work at Home…

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Work at home scam: University

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Work at home scam: University

Yesterday, I received three emails in a fairly short period of time – fortunately, they automatically went to spam so there was no danger of mixing them up with anything that was even close to real, but even if that had not happened, it was fairly evident quickly this was yet another work at home scam. Frankly, because the emails are so comical, I feel like I should share them. Take a look at this crap:       Now, crappy grammar aside, this is clearly someone’s idea of making “original” content by spinning. Another failure but that’s neither here…

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Fun and Games with Domains

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Fun and Games with Domains

I have had this domain for a while, in fact, this Creation Date: 30-jan-2009, is for Freelancing and More.com and this Domain Registration Date: Tue Aug 25 14:47:34 GMT 2009 is for the .biz registration of the same site.  The no scam work at home site is far newer, Domain Registration Date: Sun Sep 04 01:14:30 GMT 2011. Now during all of this time, I have managed to eek out about $200 dollars in total advertising revenue earnings across ALL of these sites including from Google AdSense, InfoLinks and Panther ads. So, with that said, you can imagine my total…

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All Types of (bogus) work at home jobs

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All Types of (bogus) work at home jobs

For some bizarre reason, it appears that scam and con artists do not know how to use Google to search for people who are going to call them out. This has its benefits of course because it allows me to easily identify scams and cons and point them out so others do not fall into their weird traps. Now I have to admit, I take more than a bit of delight in this because frankly, it makes my mission to call these scumbags out.  So here’s the latest one: I received an email telling me that there were work at…

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Old Scam: The Coaching Department

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Old Scam: The Coaching Department

Recently I had more than one person ask me to look into this company called “The Coaching Department” and boy oh boy is this one fun! It’s rather amusing when someone gets outed for doing something wrong that they end up finding other ways to continue their con artist ways. Here are the three sites you need to watch out for: DO NOT register on any of these sites, they are a scam!  You can find more information about these bozos here: PLEASE READ before you too get sucked into this scam: Apply Knowledge  Rip Off Report Coaching Department Scam…

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Purchase your way to more money: NOT!

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Purchase your way to more money: NOT!

A few weeks back a friend of mine contacted me about a writing site where she had written several articles and wound up earning just over $23.  I was curious as to the nature of this site because she was made an offer to “increase” her earnings by “buying” her way into a new writing level. I found this particularly fascinating since most writing sites require writers to submit content that is ranked to “increase” their rating so I decided to take a further look. The site is called iWriter and is run by none other than Brad Callen who is a…

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Credit Payoff and Repair Scam

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Credit Payoff and Repair Scam

As many of you know, I spend a fair amount of time on LinkedIn groups largely because there are so many diverse people on the network. However, one of the biggest problems with LinkedIn is anyone can post anything they want with little (or no) danger of getting banned.  The latest one I see is a group of people promoting a “Government Grants for getting out of debt”. I’m here to tell you, it is NEVER going to happen!   Here’s the “overall” gist of their message “When looking to pay off credit card debt, one of the most overlooked…

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Running under the radar

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Running under the radar

This past week on the radio here in our local area (Boston) I have been hearing about “Flip this house” seminars that are being offered “Free” for a limited number of people. While I question how “limited” these seminars are when you are advertising on the television, I would also like to warn people about how these things work and make sure that you don’t wind up getting taken advantage of by these less than honest snake oil salesmen. The gig is up: Promises that cannot be kept For the everyday person, it is important to understand these guys are…

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Dishonesty at the highest degree

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Dishonesty at the highest degree

As most of you probably know, I have been a long-time proponent of oDesk and the model they create for freelancers. I have certainly complained about a lot of things on oDesk and I’ve also warned folks of the “dangers” of accepting assignments over the long-term because in my mind, it provides freelancers with a false sense of security (in my opinion). With that said, I firmly believe that all freelancers should charge a reasonable rate for their work. This level of “reasonable” admittedly is somewhat subjective and varies from freelancer to freelancer.  While some of us may charge $30…

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No ethics or morals either

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No ethics or morals either

I am pretty outspoken about how I feel about academic writing I’ve written about my feelings (and shared a conversation with someone) regarding this practice. Not only do I consider this type of writing intensely dishonest, I find it far worse when I see some of the ads for this type of work. Let’s talk about a post that recently cropped up on LinkedIn. Unfortunately, the “free” version of LinkedIn is somewhat problematic since any idiot can set up an account and claim they are anyone they want to be. That aside, I wouldn’t pay to use LinkedIn, but that’s…

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Spammer: Kizi Games

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Spammer: Kizi Games

Seriously? I get all kinds of spam comments but this one has to take the cake. This guy is from Isreal and is on a number of blacklists. You can see the on this blacklist check that the IP address 212.117.143.69 is where they are coming from. Now why they pick a freelancing site to try to promote a gaming site beats the crap out of me, but so be it. I deleted most of the comments but here’s the general gist: kizi kizinew.net 212.117.143.69 Submitted on 2013/01/05 at 3:03 am kizi… Almost all of what you point out is…

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Another spammer hits my blog

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Another spammer hits my blog

As usual, I’m always on the lookout for spammers and scammers. However, the latest spammer is really getting on my nerves! This bozo is trying to show that they can post their crap anyplace they want and they’re posting 8-10 comments daily on my blog Freelancing and More. Here’s what their comments look like.   They are pretty clever too since they have managed to purchase a ton of URL addresses and add their crappy content to them. They were also smart enough to use a masking system so you can’t tell who owns them. So, if you see anything…

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Academic writing dishonesty

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Academic writing dishonesty

I have spoken before about academic writing and have made it pretty clear that I consider it one of the lowest forms of writing found anywhere on the net. In fact, I would rather starve to death than actually engage in academic writing. As far as I’m concerned, if you are writing student’s school papers, you’re helping them cheat their way through school. Today, I found a batch of spam comments on my blog Freelancing and More and decided to see where it went. Well, lo and behold, it went to an essay writing service with a small disclaimer on…

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Dishonest Vendor

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Dishonest Vendor

Since I have been refused any help either from the company or from Microsoft in over a month, it’s time to warn you about purchasing Windows 8 from this vendor: Arvato Digital Services. Here’s my story: On November 12, I purchased an upgrade of Windows 8 using the software update shown on the Microsoft home page which tests your system for compatibility issues. Since there were none, I went ahead and I upgraded to Windows 8 with no problem. The upgrade cost me $39.99. This was on my primary laptop which I use 99.9% of the time. However, I do…

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