Financial scams and Internet surveys

Surveys that promise free gifts in exchange for responding to a few questions are either harvesting your e-mail address so that they can bury you with e-mail messages or worse, they could be attempting to commit identity theft. Consumers should be aware of solicitations of a free Ipod or a valuable gift card from a famed merchant as the price for spending a little while completing a questionnaire on the Internet. Watch out; these offers are often financial scams.

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The e-mail message may include some information about how the organization is interested in learning about your spending tendencies and will reward a few minutes of your time with a free gift. What do you have to lose by responding to a questionnaire advertisement? The offer unquestionably sounds tempting when it comes in your electronic mail inbox - "Get a free Ipod!" or "Get a free $250 gift card!", simply for filling out an online survey.

Survey advertisements that promise free gifts, like everything else that seems to be too good to be true, are often financial scams. The "few minutes" of your time can turn out to be endless hours of time if you are ready to spend it. What about the Ipod? When do you get that? Assuming that you have not forgotten about the Gift while filling out countless survey questions, you may notice that in the end there is no stated way to obtain it and your time has been a waste. The surveys go on and on and on, asking you all kinds of personal questions. Once you imagine you are done, you are suddenly redirected to a different Internet site that wants you to fill out a new questionnaire.
 

Once you give out your electronic mail address to the questionnaire company, you will find your name added to countless spam lists, as the survey company will definitely sell your address to anyone and everyone who will pay for it. Your time spent on these questionnaires could do more harm than you realize. Every one of these surveys are going to ask you for your electronic mail address.

By giving away your electronic mail address, your name, mailing address and credit card information, the criminals who are conducting the survey have what they need to go out and apply for new accounts or apply for loans in your name. If you give out personal information, you have set yourself up to be a victim of identity theft. These questionnaires vary, but many of them will also request financial or personal information, such as your full name, home address and phone number. Some surveys may ask you to offer a charge card number, possibly to pay for mailing costs. If identity thieves obtain your financial or personal information from these questionnaires, you may be up to your neck in debts you didn't even know you had, as the criminals spend tens of thousands of dollars in your name. These surveys could cause your credit report to become littered with unpaid debt, all accumulated by the opportunists that made off with your financial or personal information.

These Internet questionnaires promise a lot, but all they deliver is trouble. While you try to straighten out your credit report, you will have additional problems as you attempt to take out loans or acquire credit cards. It will take you months, if not years, to sort out the problem.