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A paid or incentivized survey is a type of statistical survey where the participants/members are rewarded through an incentive program, generally entry into a sweepstakes program or a small cash reward, for completing one or more surveys.
A paid survey is used to collect quantitative information about the participants' personal and economic habits set against their particular demographic.
Legitimate surveys are usually unpaid (as with a Gallup poll) or incentivized. Surveys where the respondent must pay or purchase products to join a panel are generally scams, as are sites that disappear before paying the participants. [1] Legitimate surveys do not need credit card information from respondents. [2]
An advance-fee scam is a form of fraud and is one of the most common types of confidence tricks. The scam typically involves promising the victim a significant share of a large sum of money, in return for a small up-front payment, which the fraudster claims will be used to obtain the large sum. If a victim makes the payment, the fraudster either invents a series of further fees for the victim to pay or simply disappears.
A Ponzi scheme is a form of fraud that lures investors and pays profits to earlier investors with funds from more recent investors. Named after Italian businessman Charles Ponzi, this scheme misleads investors by either falsely suggesting that profits are derived from legitimate business activities, or by exaggerating the extent and profitability of the legitimate business activities, leveraging new investments to fabricate or supplement these profits. A Ponzi scheme can maintain the illusion of a sustainable business as long as investors continue to contribute new funds, and as long as most of the investors do not demand full repayment or lose faith in the non-existent assets they are purported to own.
A pyramid scheme is a business model that recruits members via a promise of payments or services for enrolling others into the scheme, rather than supplying investments or sale of products. As recruiting multiplies, recruiting becomes quickly impossible, and most members are unable to profit; as such, pyramid schemes are unsustainable and often illegal.
A perverse incentive is an incentive that has an unintended and undesirable result that is contrary to the intentions of its designers. The cobra effect is the most direct kind of perverse incentive, typically because the incentive unintentionally rewards people for making the issue worse. The term is used to illustrate how incorrect stimulation in economics and politics can cause unintended consequences.
The principal–agent problem refers to the conflict in interests and priorities that arises when one person or entity takes actions on behalf of another person or entity. The problem worsens when there is a greater discrepancy of interests and information between the principal and agent, as well as when the principal lacks the means to punish the agent. The deviation from the principal's interest by the agent is called "agency costs".
Email fraud is intentional deception for either personal gain or to damage another individual using email as the vehicle. Almost as soon as email became widely used, it began to be used as a means to defraud people, just as telephony and paper mail were used by previous generations.
A lottery scam is a type of advance-fee fraud which begins with an unexpected email notification, phone call, or mailing explaining that "You have won!" a large sum of money in a lottery. The recipient of the message—the target of the scam—is usually told to keep the notice secret, "due to a mix-up in some of the names and numbers," and to contact a "claims agent." After contacting the agent, the target of the scam will be asked to pay "processing fees" or "transfer charges" so that the winnings can be distributed, but will never receive any lottery payment. Many email lottery scams use the names of legitimate lottery organizations or other legitimate corporations/companies, but this does not mean the legitimate organizations are in any way involved with the scams.
Cost per action (CPA), also sometimes misconstrued in marketing environments as cost per acquisition, is an online advertising measurement and pricing model referring to a specified action, for example, a sale, click, or form submit.
A high-yield investment program (HYIP) is a type of Ponzi scheme, an investment scam that promises unsustainably high return on investment by paying previous investors with the money invested by new investors.
The overjustification effect occurs when an expected external incentive such as money or prizes decreases a person's intrinsic motivation to perform a task. Overjustification is an explanation for the phenomenon known as motivational "crowding out". The overall effect of offering a reward for a previously unrewarded activity is a shift to extrinsic motivation and the undermining of pre-existing intrinsic motivation. Once rewards are no longer offered, interest in the activity is lost; prior intrinsic motivation does not return, and extrinsic rewards must be continuously offered as motivation to sustain the activity.
A spoofed URL involves one website masquerading as another, often leveraging vulnerabilities in web browser technology to facilitate a malicious computer attack. These attacks are particularly effective against computers that lack up-to- security patches. Alternatively, some spoofed URLs are crafted for satirical purposes.
A bidding fee auction, also called a penny auction, is a type of all-pay auction in which all participants must pay a non-refundable fee to place each small incremental bid. The auction is extended each time a new bid is placed, typically by 10 to 20 seconds. Once time expires without a new bid being placed, the last bidder wins the auction and pays the amount of that bid. The auctioneer profits from both the fees charged to place bids and the payment for the winning bid; these combined revenues frequently total more than the value of the item being sold. Empirical evidence suggests that revenues from these auctions exceeds theoretical predictions for rational agents. This has been credited to the sunk cost fallacy. Such auctions are typically held over the Internet, rather than in person.
Voice phishing, or vishing, is the use of telephony to conduct phishing attacks.
A work-at-home scheme is a get-rich-quick scam in which a victim is lured by an offer to be employed at home, very often doing some simple task in a minimal amount of time with a large amount of income that far exceeds the market rate for the type of work. The true purpose of such an offer is for the perpetrator to extort money from the victim, either by charging a fee to join the scheme, or requiring the victim to invest in products whose resale value is misrepresented.
Computer-assisted web interviewing (CAWI) is an Internet surveying technique in which the interviewee follows a script provided in a website. The questionnaires are made in a program for creating web interviews. The program allows for the questionnaire to contain pictures, audio and video clips, links to different web pages, etc. The website is able to customize the flow of the questionnaire based on the answers provided, as well as information already known about the participant. It is considered to be a cheaper way of surveying since one doesn't need to use people to hold surveys unlike computer-assisted telephone interviewing. With the increasing use of the Internet, online questionnaires have become a popular way of collecting information. The design of an online questionnaire has a dramatic effect on the quality of data gathered. There are many factors in designing an online questionnaire; guidelines, available question formats, administration, quality and ethic issues should be reviewed. Online questionnaires should be seen as a sub-set of a wider-range of online research methods.
An incentive program is a formal scheme used to promote or encourage specific actions or behavior by a specific group of people during a defined period of time. Incentive programs are particularly used in business management to motivate employees and in sales to attract and retain customers. Scientific literature also refers to this concept as pay for performance.
A technical support scam, or tech support scam, is a type of fraud in which a scammer claims to offer a legitimate technical support service. Victims contact scammers in a variety of ways, often through fake pop-ups resembling error messages or via fake "help lines" advertised on websites owned by the scammers. Technical support scammers use social engineering and a variety of confidence tricks to persuade their victim of the presence of problems on their computer or mobile device, such as a malware infection, when there are no issues with the victim's device. The scammer will then persuade the victim to pay to fix the fictitious "problems" that they claim to have found. Payment is made to the scammer through ways which are hard to trace and have fewer consumer protections in place which could allow the victim to claim their money back, usually through gift cards.
Elder financial abuse is a type of elder abuse in which misappropriation of financial resources or abusive use of financial control, in the context of a relationship where there is an expectation of trust, causes harm to an older person.
Google Opinion Rewards is a rewards-based program developed by Google. It was initially launched as a survey mobile app for Android and iOS developed by Google. The app allows users to answer surveys and earn rewards. On Android, users earn Google Play credits which can be redeemed by buying paid apps from Google Play. On iOS, users are paid via PayPal. Users in the available countries who are over 18 years old are eligible. Google Opinion Rewards works with Google Surveys, market researchers make the survey through Google Surveys and answers are received through Google Opinion Rewards by app users. This process provides surveyors with a large pool of surveyees quickly. This "fast and easy" surveying process has been criticized due to contention over the validity of results as well as concern over the privacy and security of the app users' data.