WEB SCAMS
Work at McDonald's by day, cheat Web sites out of thousands of dollars by night.
So goes the life of British hacker Moony1234, who works part-time at Mickey D's while attending the English equivalent of high school. When he isn't flipping burgers or studying for exams, the 16-year-old Briton has a nice sideline: scamming pay-to-surf (PTS) Web sites for an extra $300 to $3,000 a month.
"I could probably teach someone to make a simple cheat in one hour," says Moony, who also runs Paid2Cheat (www.paid2cheat.com), one of several sites that provide programs to scam PTS operations. Moony says that some hackers cheating the pay-to-surfs are making up to $18,000 a month.
Most PTS sites pay users about 50 cents an hour to browse the Web while viewing targeted ads displayed in a desktop view bar; a tally is kept of total sites visited. Surfers receive additional money by referring others to the sites. But in a matter of seconds, cheaters can install a program that, via simple mouse-movers and auto-scrollers, allows them to bypass view bars and make it appear as if they're actively surfing. Advanced swindlers generate phony accounts, which they use to credit themselves with hundreds of referrals.
The cheating couldn't come at a worse time for the 50-plus PTS sites, most of which are already struggling to survive. In July, PTS pioneer AllAdvantage.com was forced to withdraw its IPO and lay off 60 staffers after suffering more than $100 million in losses. Unsurprisingly, investors have become increasingly skeptical about the entire sector.
"If there are any pay-to-surf companies that want to be here for more than six months, they have to find a way to get around the cheaters," says Richard Kahn, CEO of Paid For Surf, a New York-based company that deletes about 100 accounts daily for cheating. The company is building a database of names and email and street addresses that it plans to hand over to the FBI.
Another PTS company, ValuePay.com, has developed a patent-pending system called IntellipIggy! that it says neutralizes cheat programs with a randomly appearing Click Here button. ValuePay is even planning a competition to award prize money to anyone who can cheat its system. Sounds like a challenge that a certain part-timer at McDonald's will find hard to resist.
MUST READ
Cross Addressing
The Valley's New Cardinal Rule
Get Paid Not to Surf!
Art Techo
In Search of Xcellence
This Cure Sucks!
People
Jargon Watch
Eye of the Storm
Songs in the Key of You
Past Due
Click My Love Pump
Ask Dr.Bob
Raw Data
