Avatars

Hmm...I don't see how anyone could steal my identity from my picture. If somebody thinks I'm that beautiful that they want to pretend to be me, then cool! LOL! On social sites, like Myspace, I give people a bad time if they won't post a picture. Especially if they are male. I feel better if I can put a face to the name...even if it is the picture that came with their wallet!

 

It is a matter of your own choice. I am not comfortable posting my picture, and for that matter, why do people take up names and not register on this forum with their real name? If they are comfortable posting their pics, they can use their real name too.

 

I use my real name in many places around the net, but tend to follow the prevailing practice at whatever forum I'm using. My other name besides 'ergo' begins with Michael and ends with Hart. Thousands of people I've met in person have known me by it, and it would be far easier for any of them to harm me than some random person on the internet. If someone wants to take over my identity, they're welcome to it. They can have my thousands of dollars of debt for cancer treatments as well.

Seriously, if anyone here wants to be me, just drop me a msg, okay? I'll set you up with whatever you need. The only condition is that you have to take over everything, the bad as well as the good.

 

I don't post my real name because then someone COULD steal my identity and that would really be a mess. But this forum is more trustworthy then say, Myspazz or some other site. Sooo.....without further ado, let me inrotroduce myself. My name is Stephanie Costello, I'm a 45 year old mother of three, grandmother of one. Nice to meet you all!

I'm with you, Michael. Take my identity; I double dog dare you because I'm also in debt up to my eyeballs and realy have nothing else to lose. Well, except for my dignity...lol.

 

I'm probably the last person who should be a role model for anybody, so don't come out of the closet on my account.

But anyway, nice to re-meet you, Stephanie!

Dignity's something that no one can take away from you, so I don't think you have anything to worry about there.

 

Awww..thanks. On Myspazz, I call myself Stevie C. because Stevie was my childhood nickname. My son's middle name is Michael. It's always been one of my favorite names--it's strong, you know?

Hey sonica, (I would use the quote thingy but I don't know how) I thought "sonica" wasn't real. Is that your real name? Either way, I really like it!

 

Sonica is a fictitious name which I have used to sign-up with some sites while working on hits. I did not know that hits which required you to sign-up were against Amazon TOS. I have used this name for sending mails using email serivces like mailinator etc.

 

I didn't know that either. Thanks for the heads up!

 

The policy is somewhat open to interpretation.

In the Worker FAQ, they state, "a HIT that solicits users to sign up for accounts or offers on other web sites is inappropriate because it violates the Participation Agreement." However, the Participation Agreement only says this about the matter: "You may use information or other data acquired from your use of the Site solely to the extent necessary for you to use the Site and for no other purpose, including but not limited to, for purposes of solicitation, advertising, marketing, unsolicited e-mail or spamming, harassment, invasion of privacy, or otherwise objectionable conduct."

Then they have another FAQ which includes:

The only one I could see applying to Andy's HIT where he paid some of us to sign up and write 10 posts here is the prohibition against marketing/advertising. That's a bit hard to uphold, though, when there's nothing commercial about this site. If anything, we're marketing for Amazon by helping people get more out of MTurk.

Other cases are more clear, such as when a requester wants you to go to someone else's forum and post spam (or something very close to it).

 

I did not say this in context to Andy's hit, in fact he is doing a great job. This site helps us get information and thus makes our tasks at mturk easier. I have had to sign-up at various websites to post a comment or if you see the recent hit - some lazygreen site asking you to post comments or upload videos/pics etc.

 

What about those hits where you just submit your email addy? But it's for a survey site...or affiliate of such. I hate those! Even if you don't go any further than that, if you submit your email, that company then sends you spam email. I know
I personally never looked at Andy's hits as spam or solicitation--but more like helping people become aware of this forum. I know this forum has been a huge help for me. In fact, I never accepted the hit. I checked it out and signed up because I had been hoping for something like this all along--a place for all of us to exchange ideas and awareness

 

Sorry, Sonica, I just decided to address it since you seemed to be speaking in a general way to include all kinds of sign-ups, and Andy's was one kind several of us did here.

I haven't seen that one from lazygreen yet. Sign-up HITs seem to come in waves. For a while there will hardly be any, then all of sudden there are tons of them.

There's one up now which pretty much typifies what I think Amazon wants us to report:

I used to report all of these, but then I figured why am I doing free police work for Amazon? If they want me to clean up the site for them, they can at least afford to pay me a couple pennies for every violator I turn in. Now I just report the worst offenders, like people who want turkers to write fake reviews.

I checked it out and signed up because I liked it, then went back and took the dollar. I think I had around $9 in my account that night, and wanted to hit $10 so I could do a deposit. (Sorry, Andy. I'll be happy to give your dollar back if you want. )

I've always hated the ones with the endless ad-oriented surveys, though I've never seen one on MTurk. Would you like more information about getting an online degree? Are you trying to quit smoking? Would you like to a quote on auto insurance? Do you or a loved one have diabetes? No, no, no and no. Next page. No, no, no, no. Next page. No, no... and on and on. A lot of the time I gave up before reaching the end, if there ever was one to reach. So many "free" magazine subscriptions I never managed to claim... *sigh*

 

Shego, if you bother to do those hits which require you to submit your e-mail address, there are two things you can do. One is use an email service like mailinator, where you can go and check your mails. Once you read them, they get deleted. I use mailinator especially when I am to click on a confirmation link for verifying my membership. Another option is to keep another email address for these kind of jobs. I do both, use mailinator and have another gmail account to tackle spam. As such someone is bothering me with unwanted mails of dubious schemes and online casino sites. I have to delete two or three mails on a daily basis, and this people are so smart that they keep on sending mails through different names.

I actually signed up with the lazy green site, as it is doing something for the environment. I see new hits daily from them, but I have not done a single one. After signing up I just lost interest.

Sorry, the name of this site is layZ green.

 

Thanks for the info, sonica. I stopped doing those hits and even reported a few (the survey site ones) because there were so many of them for a while there. I contacted one of the requestors once too. I reminded him per the agreement with the survey affiliate, that he is not supposed to be spamming on other sites. He said he would be more careful in the future.

 

I belong to a couple of those sites. They are kind of fun but it takes forever to make any money. Then I found mturk and now I don't bother much with them. The site even gives you affiliate materials you can put on your own personal website (banners and such) but strictly forbids members to post anything on other people's sites to try and recruit new members. The penalty if caught, is being banned and losing whatever money you may have earned thus far. Wouldn't posting oin mturk count as a violation of that policy?

 

I cannot figure out how to put my avatar! I assume it is because I'm only a Junior member and not a Registered member??

 

Go to settings and then edit avatar. I haven't done it, but I think that's the spot.

 

Ahhh. Duh. Thanks Mayhem.