Online Survey Scams - How to Avoid Them

The most common survey scam is to collect your email address from what looks like a legitimate online survey registration and to then spam you, they may even sell their mailing address list to other spammers. I give you a hot tip how you can minimise this when you are suspicious. See my free report - The Truth about Paid Online Surveys in Australia on the home page.

The second type of paid survey scam is that you dutifully fill out several surveys, accumulate points or cash in your account and when you ask to be rewarded, you get zip. The only way you learn about these are through experience or finding out from someone else who has revealed then as a scam site (see below "How to check whether others have reported a paid online survey site as a scam site")

Australian Market Research and identifying legitimate research

More recently, Australian market research companies and especially their peak body (Australian Market and Social Research society) have found that Australians are becoming more and more reluctant to participate in market surveys, to this end one of the initiatives they have had is launching the website "your view counts" to raise awareness of the importance of market research.

Their online leaflet called "A consumer's guide to identifying legitimate research" gives good advice on how to recognise a legitimate researcher:

Legitimate Researchers WILL	Legitimate Researchers WILL NOT:
Respect your privacy	Sell you anything
Keep your individual answers and your identity confidential	Pass any of your personal details on to anyone else, not even their client, without your explicit permission
Tell you who they are, who the client is and what the research is about	Mislead you about the time it will take to participate in a survey.
Contact you at appropriate times as prescribed in industry standards and usually offer you an alternative time if you are too busy (telemarketing)
Provide you with a complaints mechanism, through an industry Surveyline (1300 364830).

Best Tips to avoids being scammed by online survey scams

Tip 1	You should never have to pay for completing a survey.
Tip 2	You should never be asked for your credit card details - or be required to apply for credit cards, etc. While some offers may be legitimate, it's best to be safe.
Tip 3	Read the Frequently Asked Questions section and the Terms and Conditions, if they are scammers, somewhere in there they usually reveal what you get as they have to keep within the law. If there offer is sounds to good to be true, it usually is.

Are Paid Online Survey directories a scam

These are sites that maintain a huge database of online survey companies. Some people maintain that they are a scam as most of the survey companies you can find on the net are free (like this one ). The key benefit is they save you a lot of search time. If you join one make sure they have a money back guarantee, so you can get it back. I have joined a very popular international one but requested a refund as there were limited online survey sites that were available to Australians.

Do not assume that free or paid survey lists or directories have eradicated all scam sites. Although I have scanned forums and the web to check whether those I have listed are scams, I have yet to check their responses over time to ensure they are legitimate. If they are scam sites they will be removed promptly. If you have had an experience that in your view makes them a scam, please contact us.

How to check whether others have reported a paid online survey site as a scam site

Tip 1	Type the name of the website followed by the word spam into Google and see if anything comes up.
Tip 2	Do a search for them on scam.com or ripoffreport.com or Annika's blacklist
Tip 3	Perform a whois.net lookup international sites and ausregistry.com.au for australian websites. If they are listed anonymously, they generally have something to hide. Beware

Mistaking legitimate market research companies for online survey scam sites

Occasionally you will enter your details onto a survey site and receive nothing from them apart from confirming that you are a panelist. Do not mistake these as a scam site as you may not qualify as for their particular survey. In fact, the best researchers will try and match potential survey takers as closely as possible.

Ensure you have completely filled out your profile on their site. Just filling out basic registration of profile information is not enough to get you invited to participate in surveys.