40 Something Reviews

I knew something sneaky was going on the minute I saw this site.  It had all the earmarks of a scam. Watch out for tricks like this.

Clue #1 – I clicked on an ad on a website that listed a particular URL (domain name/website address) and was taken to a website with a different address.  This is not always a bad thing.  It’s called a redirect and I actually have a couple of URLs that I redirect to different websites I own.  However, in combination with the other factors, it all added up to trouble.

Clue #2 – The site I landed on was a blog.  It was supposedly operated by some 23 year old mom who suffered from horrible cellulite that came about from being pregnant.  In bold letters up at the top of the copy (text) was the statement that she was from Columbia, South Carolina.  What a coincidence!  So was I <rolling eyes>.  I wondered why they made a point of bolding her location.

I asked Viki (co-owner of 40SomethingReviews.com) to click to the site and see what city it mentioned in the first paragraph.  Low and behold, it said our little 23-year-old mom was from……………..  Denver, Colorado.  What a coincidence… so is Viki.  <rolling eyes again>  It’s no big thing to find your location.  They can get it from your Internet Protocol (IP) address among other ways.

Clue #3 – The system she talked about was absolutely free.  Supposedly, she’d found a way to get a 30-day supply of two different supplements that would help rid cellulite and she was going to share this oh-so-secret information with us.  Mmm hmm.  We’ll see.

Clue #4 - When I clicked to the two sites she mentioned I discovered that they didn’t sell anything.  They only gave away 15-day or 30-day supplies of the products the woman mentioned.  But to get the samples, you had to provide a lot of personal information.  OK, I got it then.

What these types of sites do is give you a little something (some cheaply made supplements in this case, if they were in fact supplements and not just sugar pills) in exchange for all your personal information.  Name, address, email, phone, age, sex, etc., etc.  Then they sell your information to every spammer out there.  I have no doubt that, if I’d have given these people my information, I’d have ended up on every scammer’s email list within hours.

I bet my inbox would have been filled with all sorts of junk including some very questionable messages that no one should have to read.  Why do I think this was a scam and not legit?  All the clues added up.  In addition, if they simply wanted to give me a freebie to entice me then sell me something more expensive later on, all they needed to ask for was my first name (for personalization reasons) and my email address.  They had no reason to ask for my phone number, age, sex or any of the other information they wanted.

I’ve also heard of other reports of these types of sites.  One radio show I heard recently was talking about a string of websites that all used the same woman’s picture, but gave her a different name and different product on each one.  Problem was, all the rest of the copy on the website was the same.  So, you’d go to one site and Jenny would write something like, “I am a 25-year-old single woman who needed to get into shape. I’d heard about ABC supplements from my friends so I thought I’d give it a try.”

The next site would be the same woman’s picture, but her name would be Anne (or something).  She would write, “I am a 25-year-old single woman who needed to get into shape. I’d heard about ABC diet pills from my friends so I thought I’d give it a try.”

Beware when you’re shopping around out there.  Make sure you check out any site you buy from before making a purchase.

==== Update 6/23/2009====

I just saw another website using this exact same tactic.  It was pushing cholesterol-lowering supplements that she *thought* you *might* be able to still get free samples of… if you hurry 

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