Paid online surveys and the risks
There are many websites promoting online surveys out there. Many of them are acting as the middleman for their corporate clients. They pay you a small portion from the commissions earned by contracting a market survey job for their corporate customers.
The mechanics of online survey is first to create a profile database with as much details as possible collected from participants. This is what you are keying in by answering a huge list of questionnaires during the sign up. Typical sign up process is an act of voluntary disclosure on your part, you are giving away a lot of personal information to the online survey website, trusting that they will not disclose or will never sell your personal info to any Third Party.
Their definition on Third Party can be misleading. These websites are business entities that can associate or link with any other existing or new business entity which may not be known to you now or in the future. They are not obligated to or contractually bound to keep you informed or updated. It implies that any Third Party can legally become a part of the existing business or website that operates the online survey. Thus, your data privacy could be at real risk as you have no control whatsoever when and how it is being shared to any Third Party.
The harsh reality is paid online surveys have become a haven for Internet scam artists. Apart from selling your contact information to spammers, some of them even entice you to pay a registration fee to access their proprietary lists of online survey aggregated from many big clients, with the promise that you can earn a hefty $2000 a month working from home!
My conclusion is this, DONOT sign up any paid online survey program, it's pennies on the dollar and worst, you are risking the exposure of your personal details to more spammers.
If you agree with the above, you don't need these tips:
- Don't trust their Privacy Statement or Policy.
- Don't sign up with any website that requires a fee for accessing paid online surveys.
- Don't believe anyone who claim to make good money from online surveys.
Recent Comments
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Also, If you are not US resident don't even try it. They will not give you any assignments.
Thanks for the warning. Not all survey companies are scams. The ones I deal with are very legitimate and I do get paid from them. The best thing to get involved with would be paid focus groups. I am doing them now and have done them in the past. Most of these can pay up to $300 at a time. You have to know which ones to use. I am an expert with it. Thanks!
Nicely written. I share the same opinion about online surveys. I've tried with some in the past, but without real success. Only one was ok, I earned 6 usd in 1 year.
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Agree, I admit I have tried a couple and all I ever really accomplished was having my inbox bombarded with useless junk offers.