There’s a lot of buzz right now surrounding ‘HomeAtBiz’, a search term that seems to make no grammatical sense but at a glance you know it’s related to a home business opportunity.
Well, I checked it out and it leads to one of those fake newspaper articles advertising Easy Google Profit.
If you don’t already know, Easy Google Profit is a well known scam. It targets people who are looking for easy ways to make money online or a way to make an extra buck in today’s shaky economy.
These “Google business kit” scams are known by a lot of other names including Google Money System, Google Money Tree, Google Cash Kit and a host of others. They’re usually associated with fake blogs, fake newspaper articles and spam emails.
Why is HomeAtBiz /Easy Google Profit A Scam?
Everyone involved in the marketing of Easy Google Profit is practicing very unethical and shady marketing tactics with no regard for the people who will get taken.
Firstly, they say that Google is offering home jobs and that anyone can apply. This is false. Google doesn’t advertise jobs via third party sites in the form of vague home business opportunities.
Certainly if these newspaper articles were real they would link you to a page on the official Google website but this is not the case.Instead you get sent off to a site where they ask you to pay $1.99 for them to ship you the *free* informational kit.
Furthermore, there’s fine print at the bottom of the website that many people fail to read. The fine print states that Google has nothing to do with the opportunity being advertised. Hmmmm, what is going on there?
I’ve also seen reports of credit card information being stolen.
The Fake Article: How You Can Tell Something’s Wrong.
When you get forwarded to the fake newspaper article after typing in the HomeAtBiz search term, there are some clues on the page that will immediately tell you something fishy is going on. Sadly, many people won’t see these signs because they’re too caught up with the hope of making some easy money. Its always a good thing to have a healthy dose of skepticism when it comes to stuff like this.
Here are some ways you can tell something’s wrong with the article.
- The newspaper is from your town but you’ve never heard of it? In fact, the url in the address bar says something different from the name of the website.
- Nothing that is supposed to be clickable seems to work. For example, when it says “posted by Anthony“, you’re supposed to see a link to Anthony’s author profile and when it says “filed under Finance” then you’re supposed to see a link to all the other articles under the “Finance” category.
- All the clickable links on the page leads to the same site – the site where you sign up to give away your credit card information receive your free Google home business kit.
- How about that smiling lady with the child. Do you know her? She’s from your town and she’s supposed to be famous because there was some story on CNN, ABC and all those other channels about her. Don’t know Maria Summers? Well, there’s no Maria Summers because that’s not here name, the story was never on CNN or any of the other places they say it was featured and she’s not from your city because they’re using a script that identifies where you live from your ip address. And you will not see this but Maria Summers (that same woman) is also known by other names on hundreds of these same fake newspaper articles.
- Those ads seem to all lead to the same site. Well they’re not individual ads. If you notice its one huge banner that looks like different ads so it doesn’t matter which one you click on. Shady, shady, shady…
- The comment section? I can show you some other sites that these same comments are on. The comments are also closed due to spam. Well, if they left them open I’m sure they won’t be getting such favourable responses. They could at least moderate the comments. But the truth is that it’s all part of the act.
What To Do When You Come Across Scams like HomeAtBiz
The important thing to know is that Google doesn’t pay anyone to work from home. They do offer a program for website owners called Adsense which is the program these scammers are exploiting.
Google has addressed this issue once before and on their official blog they’ve also addressed it with a warning and suggestions on how to stay safe.
The three important ones:
- Before you fill out a form or give someone a credit card, do a web search to see what other people are saying about the company and its practices.
- Always read the fine print. Watch out for get-rich-quick schemes that charge a very low initial fee before sneaking in large reoccurring charges on your credit card or bank account.
- Be wary of companies that ask for upfront charges for services that Google actually offers for free. Check out our business solutions page before writing a check.
You can also report the sites to the Federal Trade Commission because they can do something about these false advertisers. Also use the share button share this post to all your friends so that they can be informed and stay safe.
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And yes, it is true that Adsense is unique and a very interesting way to earn money on the internet with one or more websites.
omg, i cant beleive i was a sucker for this!!! i actually bought that “at home kit” for $1 and something cents. do you think they took my credit info and doing something else with it? should i cancel my card? thanks. i feel so dumb…..
Hi Amy,
At this point I can only tell you to call and cancel the order. Notify your credit card company that you used your CC to pay for a fraudulent product and that you cancelled the order/subscription. This way if they ever charge your account again you would be able to get a chargeback and your CC company may want to cancel your CC and issue you with a new one…or blacklist the scammers from charging your card again.
Monitor your CC account for any charges that you didn’t have anything to do with.
i just wanna how how can i cancel this fruadulent service.
James, see the response above that I gave to Amy. Basically, call your bank or credit card company’s fraud department and talk to them. File a complaint with the FTC.
I was looking at google.com for fulltime job openings and i saw this thing for working for google and it’s called “Easy Google Profit”.
Is this a scam or does it really work?
Well, did you read the post?
The important thing to know is that Google doesn’t pay anyone to work from home. They do offer a program for website owners called Adsense which is the program these scammers are exploiting.
Ooh dang i just wrote a long comment and as soon as i submitted it it came up blank! Please tell me it worked properly? I do not want to write it again if i dont have to! Either the blog bugged out or i am just stuipd, the latter doesnt surprise me lol.
Well, um, the blog….isn’t bugged. So, what were you going to say?
Good Morning just figured i will let you know i had a problem with your blog coming up frozen also. Must be gremlins in the system.
I just tested and and it seems you’re right. Those damn gremlins.
I’ll try to fix this. Thanks for pointing that out.
I do not have a website so I am sorry for not able to fill that info out. I would cancel anty credit cards or cencel and bank accounts that they have the info on so they can not take anymore of your money at all.
I want to know the reliability of Google Cash, as advertise a website on which you can make money.?
If you mean Google Cash by Chris Carpenter, then then that system came out long before these scams and has now given Chris’ stuff a bad reputation.
The original Google Cash made a lot of people a lot of money and even I started on the internet with his methods. However, I would not recommend those methods today because they are outdated and things don’t work the way it did back in 2004 – 2005 when the book came out.
I fell for it! I am going to cancel my credit card tomorrow morning. I read something that said if you call to cancel the subscription then they have a record of your call and can argue with the credit card company that you have used the product. Should I call on Monday to cancel everything as well, or just say my credit card was stolen?
Be honest. Call the company and let them know you’d like to cancel.
Then call the bank and let them know that you canceled the order so if you get charged after it would be easier for you to dispute.
Finally, call the FTC.