scamworld

I found on boingboing an interesting article about internet marketing scams. The boingboing article is a summary of a longer more detailed article on the verge. So here it is: scamworld.

As we’ve seen, the basic premise of Internet Marketing is straightforward: find customers, sell them useless products, and then send the leads on to industrial strength “boiler rooms” that separate them from what little money they have left. A simple con, it still requires a massive infrastructure to maintain: mainstream media outlets like CNN and the major broadcast networks, and websites like The Huffington Post and Facebook, all play a part in getting the message of Internet Marketers out to a wider audience, either through paid advertising or programming. Google sells AdWords for phrases like “make money fast,” and when unsuspecting consumers use their credit cards to give boiler rooms money, the payment has to be processed through a merchant account.