Click the ad and you get:
It turns out that you are not being offered a job in the usual sense, but an opportunity to work for yourself, getting paid by Google “£5 to £30 for every website link [you post] … on Google”. All you have to do is to pay a £1.39 fee to get sent the details which will explain all.
Such detail as is provided before you pay is somewhat mysterious. Most of the fairly extensive text seems to be aimed at people who know almost nothing about google, with plenty of reassurance about minor side issues.
There are even 20 comments, expressing enthusiasm or dealing with difficulties like “can I use a money order”. Finally, we get:
I’m sorry to have to do this, but I have disabled the comments as I was getting 6 spam messages for every 1 valid question or comment. It’s very sad and disappointing to see that there are so many people trying to advertise their distasteful content on here, but I have no choice but to disable this option.
Emily
So that seems fairly clear. It must be a scam, because “Emily” is getting essentially nothing out of it. But I was curious as to what the scam was, so I googled “emily rosher scam” and found a blog entry. According to Jonathan Paston, it is bizarrely simple. They just charge your credit/debit card for $60 and keep on charging it each month until you stop them. They have different “Emily” pages for each country and have been doing quite well in Indonesia recently. The main site is apparently here.
The puzzling part is why they have not been closed down yet. If you look on the main site and click on Terms and Conditions at the bottom you get about 4,000 words. But the critical part is highlighted fairly clearly near the top:
I am not sure what I think about this. For example, should I be happy that many people pay substantial amounts of money for National Lottery tickets? One can regard it as a form of voluntary taxation. If they want to pay, why should I complain? On the other hand, most people do not realize that only a small percentage of the ticket money is paid out in prizes. Is that fair, or is it a scam?
No doubt if one looked into Google Profusion in detail (which I do not have time to do) one would find that the majority of people paid out substantially more than they gained from following the recommended procedure. On the other hand, it is probably possible to make money from the scheme, with a good deal of work. It is also fairly clear from the complaints (including even a youtube video) that the majority of people signing up do not realize that they are paying a monthly subscription fee. So is that a scam?
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