How does autosurf work

November 11, 2005 9:54 PM

Can any one explain 12 Daily Pro ? a family member has invested several thousand dollars. Is it legitimate?

She claims that by surfing a number of websites she is paid a percentage, sounds fishy/ponzi to me, any one know how it works?

posted by hortense to computers & internet (7 comments total)

Here is a link I found I dont know if this is the site she is involved with there seem to be quite a few.
posted by hortense at 9:56 PM on November 11, 2005

if its sounds too good to be true. It probably is.
posted by merv at 10:13 PM on November 11, 2005

Just a sneaking suspiscion that it's similar to this.
Paid to Surf + Affiliate programs have been around for some time and have earned a very bad reputation. The main point to keep in mind is simply that they're either essentially defrauding advertisers by sending their affiliates instead of potential customers or merely using this as a way to hawk their own products or services. Often their only advertisers are other paid2surf type companies (their own fronts?) that recirculate their affiliates between each other. It's a house of cards that folds sooner or later. There are various twists to this scheme but they usually amount to the same thing.
Note that this may not be true of all such endeavors and it may be possible to come out ahead in the short term. Best to keep a healthy sense of skeptisism about you at all times.
posted by IronLizard at 10:55 PM on November 11, 2005

Everyone of these schemes I hear about ends up being a scam. I don't have any experience with this specific one, but I would not keep my hopes up.
posted by meta87 at 11:06 PM on November 11, 2005

It sounds like this horse has left the barn if the family member has already paid the money. Here's a simple question: Has s/he made it back yet? Can s/he honestly say that s/he has any chance of making it back in the near future? Has s/he made *any* return on this investment? It sure sounds like the answer is no. I mean, just from the sound of it ("invested several thousand (!!) dollars in a program where you get paid just for viewing web pages") it SCREAMS scam. I mean really, how could this not be a scam? How can anyone expect to make money from that, without actually producing a product or providing a service? From what you've said and from reading that link it sounds like the only person making any money in this venture is whoever it is that convinced your family member to fork over thousands.

I'm sorry but you should be asking this the other way around: You should assume this is a scam until your family member can prove to YOU that it's NOT a scam, by actually making a profit. Anything like this should be treated as 100% fraud until proven otherwise.
posted by Rhomboid at 2:25 AM on November 12, 2005

from what i can tell, they should find out the answer pretty soon. the money expires in 12 days and payments are made in 7. also, i could only see details specifying payment for referring members - payment for viewing web pages wasn't clearly described - so it looks very like a pyramid scheme.
posted by andrew cooke at 3:59 AM on November 12, 2005

Just in case there was any doubt that this was a scam, it looks like the hammer's going to soon drop.

The 12dailyPro site is under investigation by the FBI, the Securities and Exchange Commission and at least two states, said people familiar with the investigation. In recent days, amid those probes, the main payment processor for 12dailyPro, StormPay Inc., has frozen the funds it was supposed to pay to members.

posted by Rhomboid at 5:34 AM on February 16, 2006