Work at Home Reviews

It looks like the owners of TheInternetProfitHouse.com haven’t been paying to attention to the new FTC regulations. A quick look at their website reveals many violations of new and old guidelines put forth by the Federal Trade Commission, not mention a whole host of other shady practices.

These one page Google Kit type websites have been plaguing the Internet for close to a year now. They’ve made use of the latest tools in online deception, including billing fraud, and despite prevalent legal threats are showing no signs of slowing down.

I found out about The Internet Profit House by visiting a site called internet-news-daily.com, which featured an article on Mary Steadman and her success working from home with Google. The article described how all Mary does is post links on Google which earn her $25 per link.

The article closes with a link to TheInternetProfitHouse.com claiming that you can get started for just one buck in shipping and handling fees. This feel good story has been responsible for convincing hundreds of thousands of people into signing up for one of these kits; sadly the entire thing is one big fraud.

If you scroll past the comments on the article, which are all completely fabricated, you’ll get to the disclaimers for internet-news-daily.com. Curiously, this section is longer than the entire article itself and reveals some very interesting things about Mary Steadman and internet news daily.

The reasons for the massive legal protection:

1. This is not a real newspaper.
2. They are completely misrepresenting the opportunity.
3. The testimonial is bogus and is not a real representation of earnings.
4. They are using companies’ trademarks without their knowledge or consent.

This is just what’s wrong with the site linking to TheInternetProfitHouse.com; when you get to the actual sign-up page you’re greeted with even more red flags. Let’s take a look.

Here’s a list of infractions found on The Internet Profit House:

1. Another misrepresentation of popular trademarks which have no association with the product.
2. Exaggerated and unsubstantiated income claims; they think that if they can prove that one person made that much money they can get away with having those outrageous figures in their sales pitch by covering it with a “results not typical” disclaimer. According to the FTC that is no longer allowed.
3. Bogus timer; no matter how long you take to sign up for this thing they’ll always take your money.
4. Unlawfully using the trust marks; if they were a legitimate site those icons would link to a profile for TheInternetProfitHouse.com signifying that the website has been approved. As is they’re just using the images with no sort of merit attached.

Again, this is just what’s wrong based on a quick once over. When you get down to the terms and conditions you’ll find out exactly why you shouldn’t do business with this company.  They say that all you need to do is pay the $0.99 for S&H to get started, however the full story is revealed in the fine print:

When you order the Risk Free Trial of My Online Cash Secrets you will be charged only $1.97 (non-refundable) for access to the The My Online Cash Secrets training program. You will have a full 7 day risk free trial period from your original purchase date to decide if the My Online Cash Secrets program is right for you. At the end of your 7 day trial period you will be charged $68.53 for access to the The My Online Cash Secrets program.

Refund Policy: Please note that no refunds are given after the expiration of the 7 day trial period. The mailed business kit is yours to keep and since there are no additional physical products with My Online Cash Secrets, no returns of any sort are accepted. You can cancel your membership at any time by simply contacting customer service via telephone or email.

Their Contact info is as Follows:
Toll Free Customer Service: Phone: 877-340-4694 – Customer Service representatives are available during regular business hours. E-mail: support@myonlinecashsecrets.com
My Online Cash Secrets
Athinodorou 3,
Dasoupoli, Strovolos,
P.C. 2025 Nicosia, Cyprus

So what we have here is a site that doesn’t disclose the full price of its course and is counting on the fact that you don’t read the fine print in time to cancel. The best part is that they’re located offshore, which means that all legal disputes have to take place in Nicosia, Cyprus. Good luck canceling…

By this point it should be pretty obvious that you need to stay far away from TheInternetProfitHouse.com/My Online Cash Secrets or whatever they’re going to be calling themselves next month.

Fake news sites are a recent marketing tactic used to sell a variety of offers, most commonly work at home programs known as Google Biz Kits.  Some of the more notorious programs include Google Money Tree, Easy Google Profits, and Internet Wealth Builder.

These fake news sites all follow the same basic template in which the site poses itself as a local online paper running a feature story on a successful work at home Mom or Dad.  The website owners use an IP tracking tool to make sure that the papers all have your local town in the heading.  So for instance if you live in Fresno, CA when you visit the site the heading would read “Fresno Times” and accordingly for anyone else who visits those sites.

The whole point of this facade is to build trust by having you associate someone successful from your neighborhood with a Google Biz Kit; they build this trust and then use it to boost their sales numbers.  The news article is completely fabricated and the entire story of the man who “quit his boring day job and is now raking in a fortune online” is again only created to get you to buy their product.

These sites all market a variety of kits that are supposed to get you started making money online posting links with Google or some other such bogus opportunity.

What’s the Real Scam Here?

The worst part about these fake news sites, besides the obvious deception, is that the programs they sell are ripe with hidden charges.  They claim that you can sign up for just the cost of shipping and handling but in reality that is just a short trial period after which they use your billing info to charge you a large monthly fee.  The only place that this is revealed is deep in their terms and conditions pages which are linked to at the very bottom of these websites.

The majority of people never see them and consequently have a series of charges on their credit cards that they never authorized.  Many government authorities have been notified about these persistent scams but they have yet to issue wide sweeping regulations to combat these sites.  Even worse, as soon as one site gets busted another pops up to replace it almost instantaneously, so the best way to protect yourself is to learn how to recognize and avoid these scams.

Here’s an example of what these fake news sites look like:

You may see variations of these sites but the general layout is the same and the only thing that changes are the names of the couple or person in the picture, a few details about the bogus job that was left to pursue internet riches, and as mentioned before the name of the town that the “paper” is supposedly from.  The bottom line is if you see something similar to this do not buy whatever it is they’re selling as it will cost you a lot more down the road.

Keep in mind that these internet scammers are getting more clever by the day and once this tactic stops converting they will move on to something else.  I’ve already seen some sites posing as Yahoo or Wiki Answers, which is why it’s important to use your best judgment at the time of your decisions; by the time articles like this get enough recognition it may be too late.

List of Fake News Sites:

• http://www.consumer-weekly.net/
• http://myonlinewealthreviews.com/
• http://www.net-news-daily.com/
• http://thedailytribuneonline.com/
• http://www.goolgemoney.com/
• http://www.homejobsnews.com/moms/

Foolishly, I haven’t been keeping a list of all the fake news sites I’ve come across, but if you’ve seen some please post a comment here and I will add them to this ongoing list.