As the National Internet Deals Examiner, I sometimes run across scams online that I feel must be pointed out to consumers, especially when they grow so popular that they are listed on the "What's Hot" list of Alexa.com, indicating someone is throwing a lot of advertising dollars after this one in the past day or two.
"You've been selected to take part in an anonymous survey for visitors in the [my city] area," reads the text and audio of the website. "Tell us what you think of Amazon.co in this 30 second questionnaire, and to say 'thank you', we'll offer you a few exclusive giveaways. Available Today Only: Sunday, February 17, 2013."
These surveys (also attributed to Yahoo -- even with tiny prints of disclaimers on the bottom confessing they are not affiliated with the company whose name they claim in bigger, bolder letters atop the page) sent me to research the http://consumers-research.com , further.
That's how I discovered the http://consumers-research.com/healthydiet/ page on the same domain, a telltale scammer page that's titled "Saint Louis Post | New Weight-Loss Wonder Pill Delivers Shocking Results!"
On that page, there are photos of people who've lost weight. Right-clicking on the second photo of a woman whom Consumers-research.com claims is "Connie B," and choosing to copy the image address and pasting that into Google leads us to a post titled "Better Body After Baby" by Holly Rigsby -- not Connie B -- who describes how she lost weight with a ClubFYM program, and not the "Metabolism Fuel" that consumers-research.com claims.
This is a major tip-off that consumers-research.com is a scam site that copies photos from other weight-loss bloggers and tags them as their own. A woman named "Jessica S" claims to have lost weight with the "Metabolism Fuel" system that consumers-research.com hawks, however, the same photo can be found on the Sarah Does Fitness blog , probably the original owner of the photo.
Copying and pasting a photo's URL (the long domain name address) into Google and then searching by images is a great way to uncover scammers potentially phishing for consumer information -- either to make money from gathering email addresses or by more nefarious means, and enticing people with promises of worthless prizes.
via Examiner National Edition Gadgets & Tech Channel Articles http://www.examiner.com/article/consumers-research-com-internet-scam-promises-amazon-gift?cid=roadrunner