Never give out your personal info to a requester or a site they ask you to visit! It's not only a bad idea, but it's against the rules on MTurk. You folks may find this interesting reading: http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/affiliate-programs/100863-my-bhw-cpa-guide-10-day-4.html The comments section as well, where the author discloses he's able to sign up again and again after being banned using the same name and credit card number. Amazon is operating a revolving door for spammers and scammers. Stephanie (Shego) has some commentary on this at her site: http://www.steviecostello.com/mecha...alillegal-behavior-on-amazon-mechanical-turk/ I'm not on MTurk as much lately, but whenever I go on now I end up reporting from 10-30 HITs. A lot of times the same people I've reported before. When I pointed out this major flaw in their security to Amazon, all they said was to use the Report this HIT as inappropriate link provided and they will take all reports seriously. Yeah right. There wouldn't be half as much to report if they'd stop letting these jokers in! What's worse, Amazon actually has a profit motive in letting these scammers come back. Every time they suspend an account, they keep whatever money wasn't already collected by workers. So anywhere from a few pennies to a few dollars at a time. They ought to spend that money on a developer to close the door they've left open. Or distribute it amongst those of us actually doing the reporting. Shame on you, Amazon.
What gets me is, some of these spammers are increasing the amount they are paying out in hopes of people not reporting them. Some even look more honest at first, until you get to the sign-up page for something they are getting referrals/money from. Even if I already accepted this kind of HIT, I'll report it, then go back to return it. This new requester Dish Network, should not even be allowed to be called that. AVOID!
I suggested to Amazon that they disallow or at least flag for review HITs that include links from any of the common URL shorteners -- bit.ly, tinyurl, ow.ly, etc. Generally the only requesters who use these are the ones with something to hide.
That's a start. What they are really trying to do, is hide the where the click though came from. Honest requesters have no reason of doing this.
Yep. That's also why, as a double measure, they usually don't make the links clickable, and you have to copy and paste them instead.
UPDATE: My sources tell me that Amazon is preparing to put in place measures to address these problems.
Please let this be true! I imagine anything would be easier than looking though all the 'report this requester' responses--If they honestly do that.
I am tired of reporting HITs as they invariably pop up again and again. Ergo, thanks for posting this info about blackhatworld.com. Workers have to understand that some tasks are not worth the reward offered and should avoid them. We cannot do anything except wait for Amazon to fix some minimum pay policy. I don't think that is ever going to happen.