Ads Requesting Your Phone Number
Be careful with your phone number, especially when an ad requests it. You may have seen the ad, “What’s Your IQ?” on Facebook. Well, you have to write in your phone number and by doing so you are subscribing to something (God only knows what) that will charge you a monthly subscription fee on your cell phone bill, and the thing is that most people don’t even realize they are subscribing to a paid service. However, it’s in the fine print…the REALLY fine print.
So, you might be thinking what does this have to do with anything related to this blog? Easy, I use Google Adsense. You’ll notice that there is a banner ad at the bottom of each one of my posts and to the right there are a few text links. When someone clicks on the links, I earn a little pocket change to help me keep this site running.
Well, there is one of these type of subscription ads showing up here and I want to warn you NOT to click it. There is a way that I can block this ad from appearing on my web site, but I don’t know how to do it. (So, Google adsense folks, could you help me out?) Anyway, Google places relevant ads based on content of the site and since I teach English, an ad with a little British guy in front of the British flag asking you if you’d like to test your English level gets placed on my web site. Don’t do it! It’s a scam. Ok, legally it’s not but it’s so damn tricky that I consider it a scam.
As you can see in the top left picture it says, “Comprueba tu nivel de inglés gratis,” but it also has a small price of 0.99 euros and then the little ad icon covers up the rest of the price. (English translation: “Test your English level free.”) I assume it says, “0.99 euros/SMS,” meaning that for each text message you’ll be charged 0.99 euros. So, how is that free? Beats me. My point is that the whole thing is crooked and you can’t trust them.
What happens if you click through? Well, I did just that to figure it out for myself. I went through the English test which looked pretty decent but I doubt it will actually tell you anything official about your English level. Then at the end of the test after you’ve worked all the way through the test they ask you for your cell phone number. This too gets on my last nerve since people have the idea that well, heck they’ve already gone this far and they don’t want it to be just a waste of thier time so they put their number in so that they can get their results. And one more thing, why don’t they just ask for your email if they weren’t going to charge you for the free test?
My advice is just be careful and don’t give your phone number out to folks online. (The rare time when it’s ok to do so is to verify your identity.)
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