Have you ever seen these ads such as:

– Know your IQ?
– Is the actor moving left or right?
– Is the picture moving?

And other dumb tests where if you win, you’ll get the glorious ipad (at one point it was a PS3, WII, iphone, etc…) for free (of course, nobody wins). The thing is you answer the first question, which is about clicking on a image (you can know directly it’s nonsense, as both answers are about clicking on the same image, and the link is always the same, but anyway…), then after you click on the answer on the image, you are redirected to a place where you have to answer 4-5 stupid questions. Now after answering these questions, this where the scam starts:

– You are asked to enter your phone number
– You will receive a PIN on your phone number
– You enter the PIN on the website where you are told in minuscule, unnoticeable, and unreadable letters that you are subscribing to a paid service.
– And there you go, you are now a proud subscriber of a useless service, charging you (even if you are on prepaid) $10/week (or /2 weeks). The service consists of them sending you stupid messages to your phones every week, for example: “The longest distance ever flown by a chicken is 13 meters”. Hmmmm…
– Of course, eventually, you will catch the SCAM, and call them to cancel the service.

This business model is what made Zynga, the maker of addictive and IQ lowering games such as farmville and fishville, valued at 1 billion.

The thing is Mobile companies are acting as a payment gateway, they are the ones charging the customer for this nonsense service, and then paying something between 20% to 50% to the other scammer, depending on the volume. Clearly, the mobile companies are getting the lion’s share out of this, and they shouldn’t pretend like it’s not their fault when customers call them and complain.

I am very open to making money the easy way, but this is just plain stealing. Governments need to step down and regulate this industry that apparently thinks it’s above the law.