Do you do online surveys?

[Marlin]

I was wondering if anyone else does online surveys? I just got 4 bucks for doing a candy survey that took me about 15 minutes. I figure I make about 30-40 bucks a month doing surveys. I paid for my sirius radio and 2 extra car kits with survey money It sucks at first, you don't start out getting good surveys that are high paying, but if you consistently do the 50 cent surveys and do well on the reviews if they send you samples, you start getting invited to others. I did a 10 dollar tv survey a month ago, I get shower gel, medicine, and other little things in the mail to test. I did the cherry pepto that just came out in the beginning of the year. Its kind of neat getting these products months before release and critiquing them. If anyone is interested, I can send you some invites for a few of the ones I do. yes I get a kickback if you join, but if you are like me and are on the internet all the time, might as well make a few bucks doing it. Send me a PM if interested.
I also do the home scan deal, I scan everything I buy, but that is time consuming and the rewards are not worth it. I might stop that one soon.

[BigSwede]

Are you doing a survey on online surveys?

[Marlin]

Are you doing a survey on online surveys?

[Bob Barker]

what's a home scan deal?

[Marlin]

what's a home scan deal?

I have a barcode scanner, I have to scan everything I buy, enter the prices and you send over the phone via the scanner they send you. In exchange, you get points, which can be used to get free merchandise. Not worth it my opinion, since I shop at the commissary a lot. I have to enter each individual price. Imagine doing that for 300 bucks worth of groceries. If I shop at a chain, it reads the prices automatically. Not so bad, but out in town is way too expensive. I can send you an invite for that if you want, just PM me your email address.

[Riff Raff]

Nope, I deliberately don't do on-line surveys because of the following reasons:

A. Too time consuming and wastes my life away for too little monetary gain. I've got better things to do with my valuable time than stare at my computer screen all-day in order to get a couple of bucks. Ain't worth my time and effort.

B. My E-Mail in-box will immediately get flooded with E-Mail Junk Mail and Scammer's trying to inflict viruses within my computer. The best way to deter possible E-Mail viruses is to simply not click-on the link.

[Marlin]

Nope, I deliberately don't do on-line surveys because of the following reasons:

A. Too time consuming and wastes my life away for too little monetary gain. I've got better things to do with my valuable time than stare at my computer screen all-day in order to get a couple of bucks. Ain't worth my time and effort.

B. My E-Mail in-box will immediately get flooded with E-Mail Junk Mail and Scammer's trying to inflict viruses within my computer. The best way to deter possible E-Mail viruses is to simply not click-on the link.

Umm, I don't get any spam or viruses? As for the waste of time, if I am chillin at home anyway...why not make a few bucks?

[Stephen Biko]

You are trading your personal privacy for a few bucks. More power to you. The problem is that few people understand the ramifications of giving away their privacy until it bites them in the sass, at which point it is too late to get your privacy back.

One example - toll road transponders like EzPass. Much easier than paying cash - and frequently cheaper too. The problem is that all the records of your ezpass use end up as a permanent record in their database. Those records have turned out to be a gold mine for divorce attorneys looking to prove infidelity (civil cases only require a "preponderance of evidence" not "beyond a reasonable doubt"). Saved a few bucks up front but those people ended up losing 1000x what they saved in their divorce settlements.

Not the same as filling out surveys and scanning in all your purchases - but it isn't difficult to see scenarios where that becomes a problem too. Lets say you smoke and you fill out a survey about how many packs a day you smoke - maybe sometime in the future your health insurance decides to decline coverage to people with a history of smoking as much as you admitted to in that survey. Or maybe it isn't something so obvious - say you don't smoke but you eat a lot of junk food and in 10 years time the war on junk food has made it politically correct to treat junk food eaters as badly as smokers and you can't get a job because you have a record of eating too much junk food (just like a few hopsitals now refuse to hire smokers).

You can't know the future - giving away your privacy for a few bucks is like opening pandora's box. You have no idea what you are letting loose with your privacy but once it is out there in the hands of amoral corps and their government lapdog you'll never ever be able to put it back in the box again.

For me, the trade-off of a few hundred bucks in hand against who knows what kafkaseque future is not even close to being worth it.

[Marlin]

You are trading your personal privacy for a few bucks. More power to you. The problem is that few people understand the ramifications of giving away their privacy until it bites them in the sass, at which point it is too late to get your privacy back.

One example - toll road transponders like EzPass. Much easier than paying cash - and frequently cheaper too. The problem is that all the records of your ezpass use end up as a permanent record in their database. Those records have turned out to be a gold mine for divorce attorneys looking to prove infidelity (civil cases only require a "preponderance of evidence" not "beyond a reasonable doubt"). Saved a few bucks up front but those people ended up losing 1000x what they saved in their divorce settlements.

Not the same as filling out surveys and scanning in all your purchases - but it isn't difficult to see scenarios where that becomes a problem too. Lets say you smoke and you fill out a survey about how many packs a day you smoke - maybe sometime in the future your health insurance decides to decline coverage to people with a history of smoking as much as you admitted to in that survey. Or maybe it isn't something so obvious - say you don't smoke but you eat a lot of junk food and in 10 years time the war on junk food has made it politically correct to treat junk food eaters as badly as smokers and you can't get a job because you have a record of eating too much junk food (just like a few hopsitals now refuse to hire smokers).

You can't know the future - giving away your privacy for a few bucks is like opening pandora's box. You have no idea what you are letting loose with your privacy but once it is out there in the hands of amoral corps and their government lapdog you'll never ever be able to put it back in the box again.

For me, the trade-off of a few hundred bucks in hand against who knows what kafkaseque future is not even close to being worth it.

So by your logic, I assume you don't use a credit card or check card. You pay full price for things at the grocery store vice using the store discount card. You don't have a cell phone, or cable/satellite tv or ISP? You don't do online banking? Drivers license, taxes, airline tickets, bills, you give away so much information for free, might as well get paid a bit.

If you spend your time worrying about stuff like that, that means you have something to worry about. Its pretty easy, don't cheat on your spouse, don't lie on applications or to your doctor. As for the junk food thing, they would have to oust the 80% of our nation that is obese. Mexicans will have taken over by then, so no worries.

As for the surveys, they never ask for your name or address or phone number and so on. All they ask is your birth year, sometimes date, but I give em the wrong date, right year, sex, and skin color. If they ever ask for more, which I can't remember any of them doing, then I don't participate. The scanner one does know my shopping habits, but buying various items does not mean I eat them? I can buy a gun tomorrow, doesn't mean I am going to shoot someone with it. That is 100% circumstantial, the fact that a lawyer gets away with **** like that is another problem in our country...a bit off topic.

By the way, I just pulled up your profile, now I have your email, your city, how many posts, when you were logged in....j/k, well, I can get those things, but you get the point. You cannot be secure in today's world. Its like social security numbers, the military uses it for EVERYTHING!!! Now they are heading to last 4 only, but we have schedules posted, now I know when I everyone has duty, when they are going to appointments and so on... there is no such thing as privacy. I also think of internet passwords, the longer they become, the better the program that hacks them becomes.

[Ascinder]

Looks like someone enjoys that tinfoil hat a little too much, lol

[vt_maverick]

So by your logic, I assume you don't use a credit card or check card. You pay full price for things at the grocery store vice using the store discount card. You don't have a cell phone, or cable/satellite tv or ISP? You don't do online banking? Drivers license, taxes, airline tickets, bills, you give away so much information for free, might as well get paid a bit.

+1 - Also keep in mind that you have to give your SSN to open a bank account, retirement plan, credit card, insurance policy, etc. You give pretty specific (and arguably obscure) examples, but honestly your information has already been gone for awhile.

If you spend your time worrying about stuff like that, that means you have something to worry about. Its pretty easy, don't cheat on your spouse, don't lie on applications or to your doctor.

That's a big +1. You're going to eventually get caught anyway, unless of course your spouse isn't really paying attention, which probably means she's cheating on you too.

I will say that I agree with Riff on the spam issue. I get pop-ups all the time asking me to sign up for surveys, and it's hard to know which ones are legit and which ones are malicious. It's not a lot of money for a decent amount of work and risk. Personally I think you'd be better off getting a part-time job (assuming you don't have to watch the kids of course) to make some real money.

[JHarris1385]

Hey my email is jharris1385@aol.com send both if you don't mind. I have been slacking for the past year on this stuff. I used to bring in a good 100-200 a month, mainly from secret shopping. I figured if you are already in the store might as well check out the RX counter or whatever the shop was and come home with about $20 extra and free groceries to a certain extent.

Thanks.

[circmand]

Hey my email is jharris1385@aol.com send both if you don't mind. I have been slacking for the past year on this stuff. I used to bring in a good 100-200 a month, mainly from secret shopping. I figured if you are already in the store might as well check out the RX counter or whatever the shop was and come home with about $20 extra and free groceries to a certain extent.

Thanks.

I know there are some secret shopper gigs out there but that is the biggest scam out there right now as well

[Marlin]

Thats why I started this thread, I have two services I participate on, not scams, as I have collected money from them. They are by invite only, so I can invite you and no worries about scams and so on...not secret shoppers, although they offer that as well.

Jharris, will send invites tonight when I get off work.

[ZubrAZ]

Marlin, to my vision, you got too defensive to Stephen's reply. He is correct: you never know how those surveys may be turned against you. Although, your example with bank cards/SSN is strong and logical, I see Stephen's advice as to minimize the risk. You could as well shop with cash, buy tickets with cash through the agency, etc. Yes, it will cost more, but that's the price you pay to decrease the chance of being hit with something you told somebody in the past.
Since everybody's willing to take as much risk as the one can handle, it is totally your right to do it, but I would suggest you to (as pretty much Stephen's post does) to try being as secure as possible. To my knowledge, some of those websites may do lots of harm to your computer, as well as seed a virus/worm that will still your pass/logins to bank/credit card sites. And consequences to that are well known.

there is no free cheese, but in mousetrap