{"id":997,"date":"2010-07-07T11:09:23","date_gmt":"2010-07-07T18:09:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/?p=997"},"modified":"2011-08-24T13:42:02","modified_gmt":"2011-08-24T20:42:02","slug":"analysis-of-a-bogus-website","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/?p=997","title":{"rendered":"Analysis of a bogus website"},"content":{"rendered":"

Imagine walking through an open-air bazaar in a third world country.\u00a0 People are yelling at you from all sides, groping at you, making outrageous claims about how they have the best deals.\u00a0 Someone might attempt to pick-pocket you.\u00a0 Would you use your credit card at one of these merchants?\u00a0 Not if you were smart, as there is a chance they would steal your number and ring up a bunch of charges.<\/p>\n

Well, that happens to be a perfect analogy for the Internet.\u00a0 In general, it is not a safe place to be and there are quite a few people out there that are trying really hard to scam you our of your hard-earned money.\u00a0 That being the case, the general principles of doing ANYTHING on the Internet should be caution and an awareness that things are not alway what they appear.<\/p>\n

Let’s look at an example.\u00a0 I recently came across a website that appears to be a Q&A blog where someone asks a question about whether a gift card can be used online.\u00a0 I’ve seen this question about 100 times because open-loop (Visa-type) gift cards can be very difficult to use for online purchases.\u00a0 It is a very good question.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Ok, first red flag, the English is horrible.\u00a0 Now, let’s look at the answers:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Again, some bad English.\u00a0 Notice the time stamp on the answers?\u00a0 What is the likelihood that every single person answered at the exact same time?\u00a0 Not likley.<\/p>\n

So this is clearly a bogus site.\u00a0 What is it trying to accomplish?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

See all the advertising?\u00a0 In this case the site has been set up purely to drive traffic to their advertising to generate pay-per-click income.\u00a0 But it would be very wrong to assume that every example of a bogus website is as benign as this one.\u00a0 For example, a site like this might exist to drive traffic to a bogus website set up to harvest peoples gift card numbers under the guise of allowing them to check their balance<\/a>.\u00a0 Setting up a website with what looks like a normal every-day person answering someones question on how to check their gift card balance would appear to legitimize the bogus balance website.<\/p>\n

So, when it comes to the Internet (and this includes SPAM emails), remember a couple of things:<\/p>\n