SW5 > Message board > Feb 2010 archive

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SW5 message board February 2010 archive

Wed, 3 Feb 10

A few months ago, this board was the subject of a 'denial of service' attack by someone attempting to promote the notorious scam site GuysForLadies.com in thousands of automatically posted messages.

This had effect of crashing the board's software, and corrupted the database of comments. It's taken longer than we'd like to restore these, and we apologise for that delay.

We'll see if the scammers resume this attempt, but the move to another message board system is in progress. Before that happens, we'd like to move the comments about a bit. At the moment, most of the comments about scams are in a post about tax issues, for example.

We are committed to retaining some of the features of this board, such as not requiring people to register before posting comments, while resisting the attempts to post spam comments promoting various illegal sites.

It's a pity that the scammers are clearly still going, but as long as they are, we will be here.

Posted by Management [Link]

The basic test is really, really simple:

Does the 'agency' you are considering joining want ANY money from you before you have cash in your hand from a client?

If the answer is yes, it's a scam. (And if it's one not mentioned here, feel free to name and shame it. We particularly like hearing from you if you have not given the scammers any money.)

The only legit sites that charge up front are open about being ad sites: you pay them money, they display your ad, and - you hope - clients contact you directly. They tend to charge no more than tens of pounds by the month, not the hundreds for a year of the scams. (Free ad sites also exist who make their money from charging for extras, whether that is more prominent placing of your ad or allowing you to sell things via the site.)

In contrast, scams typically pretend that they need to charge you for registration / identity checks / insurance / anything else they can think of. Crap. They also say they will deal with potential clients and all the other things real agencies do. Reading a typical scam's terms and conditions, what they actually 'supply' is an ad only you can see. Obviously, you're not going to get any work from that, but once they have your money - typically only cash paid into a bank, something you can't get back, will do - they are too busy laughing all the way to the bank to care.

Posted by Management [Link] [8 comments]