Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with legitimate

Legit corp?

lockestockbarrel — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 12:45:00 -0800

What are the signs of a legitimate corporation? What do legitimate corporations do that fake ones don't? I have to figure out if companies are legit or sham in an area where there are lots of benefits to being a sham. I can get ANY documents from the company, such as employee rolls, tax returns, charter papers, etc., and I can call them up and ask them questions. What should I ask for to make sure the company I'm looking at is legit?

Here's an example: Company X gets rejected from the benefit they're requesting from me. Next year, they apply under the name Company Y, but it's the same company run by the same person or people (usually these are small companies or sole proprietorship). How can I tell that Company Y is a legitimate different company and not just Company X in Y's clothing? What makes this more difficult is one person may found 5 or 6 companies and they all will apply for this benefit.

How Do I Get Paid For My Podcast?

HostBryan — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 07:02:25 -0800

How should I go about monetizing my podcast in a legitimate and professional manner? I've been operating my podcast for over three years now. In that three years, I've made a lot of new friends, met and interviewed some of my personal heroes, and just generally had a good time. We've since gone from just one main podcast to a soft launch of a network of podcasts on various topics, which I am pretty excited about.

Unfortunately, I've never really gotten anything in terms of financial compensation, which means I've been running it at a loss for three years. Now, it is not a gigantic expense and I am otherwise employed, but I'd like to make the podcast make at least a little money. I'm not looking to get rich, but if I could cover server and domain costs, give my co-hosts a little something, and maybe cover a few other bills I'd be ecstatic.

I've got some experience with radio sales but podcasts are a whole different beast, especially because it seems like I pretty much have to set up my own operation. I don't mind going hat-in-hand to potential sponsors but I also don't want to look like some shady character who's just going to take the money and run.

I plan on offering recorded ad messages and on-air mentions of the product/website/whatever, as well as banner and link space on the front page of the actual website. I'm mostly looking for cash, but trades of products or services for giveaways/reviews/whatever are also welcome.

So I guess I have a couple questions.

1. How do I go about making everything nice and legal and official? I want to make sure there's a paper trail and documents for sponsors to follow, also I want to be sure how to file taxes for this sort of thing. Plus, I don't want to look schlubby.

2. What would be a fair ballpark rate to charge for podcast advertising? We aren't a huge podcast but we get a large number of downloads for each episode, and we've been having a lot of luck with landing relatively big-name guests lately. I'm thinking of offering a tiered structure - sort of a Bronze/Silver/Gold/Platinum-type thing.

3. Would I instead be better off just accepting donations?

Thanks for your help, hive mind.

Legit landlord or identity thief?

Asymptote — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 08:33:11 -0800

What personal info does my future landlord need from me to make sure I'm legit? How do I make sure he's legit? This is my first time renting an apartment. Before I sign the lease, the landlord wants (among other info) my social security number and a copy of my driver's license. He says he wants these to run my credit history and do a background check on me. Because my parents will be cosigners on the lease, he wants the same information from them.

Is this reasonable? Or am I just setting myself up for identity theft?

Furthermore, how should I go about checking him out? Is getting his background check and credit history a good idea?

Background:
The landlord lives in NY and the apartment is in CT. I have not yet met him in person, but we've talked over the phone. I've seen the apartment and met with the current residents, who say the landlord is great. I've done some preliminary web searches to check up on him, and he's almost certainly who he says he is.

Legitimate reason to decrypt a credit card?

doomtop — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 08:58:28 -0800

Legitimate reason to decrypt a credit card? I am trying to come up with a legitimate reason to decrypt a credit card from a database of customer information. I can't see why the customer would ask for that to be done, because obviously they have access to all their own credit card information.

Can anyone think of a legitimate reason for decrypting a customer's credit card?

Quality Dedicated Hosting that allows Bittorrent Tracker? Have Budget.

mrflip — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 18:01:41 -0800

I will soon be distributing a bunch of large scientific and research datasets, all entirely legal for redistribution, many as large as a few gigabytes. Bittorrent is the best solution for this. Many respectable webhosting sites don't allow Bittorrent trackers; too many of those that do seem fly-by-night. I have a budget for this and want something respectable and reliable. Recommendations? My current host (Bluehost) has 6000GB/transfer a month, but I hear that these large caps can often be illusory; I want to be prepared for one to ten TB of traffic per month. I also need to be able to receive similarly large datasets, which I think will be much easier over bittorrent than asking folks to POST >1GB over ADSL and have it crap out after 3 hrs transfer (not to mention hitting CPU limits).

Amazon S3, at $0.18/GB, would be ~ $1000/mo for 6000 GB. I've reviewed most of the previous hosting q'ns, including Dealing with spikes in website popularity, but none of those suggestions make this work financially.

This clearly calls for bittorrent, but I've had real trouble finding dedicated hosting that will allow me to install a tracker. Bitrot has happened to the last question along these lines, and too many of the directories for tracker sites seem populated by rug merchants and fly-by-night operations.

I'm willing to spend money -- preferably in the $100-$200/mo range -- and want something respectable and reliable. If you tell me it will cost more than that then so be it. I'm figuring that the bittorrent solution (combined with throttling, ratios and a cooperative userbase) will keep me in the 1 TB/month range.

Can you recommend dedicated hosting that will allow me to run a tracker?

Photography Laureates - info please

ObscureReferenceMan — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 10:09:04 -0800

Is anyone familiar with the web site Photography Laureates? My Dad (a retired aerospace engineer) works as a professional photographer taking pictures of local high school and little league sports. Although relatively new to the field, he is quite good - both technically and artistically. But he has not been "in the game" for a long time to know the ins & outs, and potential scams.

He found a web site that runs photo contests. It is photolaureates.org. He submitted a photo, and they let him know he was a finalist for the $6500 prize. However, to confirm his entry he must pay a fee ($59).

Doing a google search on Photography Laureates resulted in a LOT of links to photography forums where people are asking the same question: is it a scam. And the concensus is, it is.

On the other side of the coin, I managed to find a link to a PR statement from Photography Laureates saying that they they are legitimate company, don't believe what people are saying, blah blah blah.

My feeling is Photography Laureates is like "Who's Who". You pay a fee to be listed in the book, then you buy the book, and can show your friends that you're in "Who's Who".

One other data point... One of the forum links I found asking "Is it a scam" was a recent one. This guy was told that he had to respond by November 3 to enter the 2007 contest. My Dad just recently got his email, but it is also for the 2007 contest. And his deadline is 12/4. (One yearly contest/month??)

So... My question is not is this a scam (I am 99% convinced that it is). But rather, does anybody know anything about this company at all? How long have they been around? How often do they run contests? Stuff like that. Thanks!

Too good to be truly existing.

divabat — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 02:30:46 -0800

How do you tell if an organization is legitimate? I've been granted an interesting opportunity by a non-profit, but I cannot tell for sure if they are legitimate or not.

Some things that seem off:

* They mention partnerships with other organizations and people on their website, but I couldn't find anything on those organizations' and people's websites to back them up

* They seemed rather vague about the opportunity

* The head of the non-profit does exist, and he is who he says he is (a lecturer at a Singaporean university). However, I couldn't find many references for the other people involved.

* They didn't show up on a Network For Good search, or an IRS search, though they did show up on another nonprofit search. (Charity Navigator, I think. Or I'm confusing them with NFG.) Thing is, I'm not sure those searches are completely reliable, because another non-profit I'm closely involved with doesn't have much info on those lists either, so I'm not sure.

* I can't find any third-party references to said opportunity; only Craigslist postings, PRWeb press releases, a MySpace profile, and a mention in a blog or two.

How else can I verify their legitimacy? They claim to be PayPal and eBay-verified. Is there a way to check this?

(for those who want to investigate: I'm referring to this, hosted and organized by this.)

Legitimate p2p examples?

spock — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 07:32:56 -0800

I need compelling examples of legitimate/legal uses of bittorrent or other p2p applications/protocols. I'm an I.T. guy on a committee that advises a university Chancellor on tech matters. I'm disturbed by the university's bowing to pressure by the RIAA and the responses being taken. We already have a Packeteer in place that (while not banning it) "prioritizes" p2p traffic into such a narrow amount of bandwidth as to make it all but unusable. Now the university is looking into Audible Magic's CopySense appliance/application. Besides the fact that such things are easily defeated by encrypting the shared files (and are therefore a huge waste of university dollars) they also give the university the ability to completely shut off the functionality p2p programs (allegedly). It seems to me that this is wrong-headed — like making VCRs nonfunctional simply because they CAN (and are) used to make copies of copyrighted material.

It seems to me that the best way to make a case against this is to cite situations or cases for which bittorrent or other p2p applications or protocols are used legitimately. I'd appreciate some examples to cite.

Is this site TopSiteReviews legit or just a shill?

Gyan — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 17:08:22 -0800

Is this site TopSiteReviews legit or just a shill? The domain was registered 10 days back and WHOIS data is protected by proxy. I found it while researching the topic in this thread. Are there other sites which are legit?