According to Internet Security Firm CommTouch, the majority of Facebook Scams in 2011 used illegal and deceptive methods to promote affiliate marketing offers – most of them email or zip-submit offers.
CommTouch claims that over 75% of all of the scams on Facebook were linked to several affiliate CPA networks and their affiliates promoting offers. Virus-like programs that spammed Facebook friends often promoted these offers. When people were tricked into clicking on those links there were often then enticed to promote the offers themselves, again without their knowledge. While the report itself did not identify that these were email/zip submit offers, anyone in the know knows that these “surveys” that give away free gift cards and free ipods, are attached to those offers — where affiliates are paid a fee between $1.50-2.00 for every consumer that enters their email address or zip code. The hope is that those consumers will then convert and actually buy offers, fill out surveys on the back-end.
CommTouch labeled the affiliates as “scammers” and “cybercriminals” leaving no room questioning that these techniques are seen as not just unethical, but criminal and illegal.
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