FREE Internet Scam just for YOU!

This is not David Finch. According to the photo name, he's Domenico.

It seemed like such a great deal, who could resist?

All I had to do was re-post the free iPod Touch offer on my Facebook account, and fulfill a deal, and bam! I’d get a free iPod Touch. Or maybe it was an iPad? Or a digital camcorder? Wait, no, the offer was for weight loss! A local area woman lost 40 lbs using this one simple trick. Or with Acai berry juice or something. All we have to do is click through and give up some personal information to find out!

Internet scams are so cheesily delicious, aren’t they? They follow you from site to site, nagging, pulling, promising the delivery of some tasty little nugget all for absolutely nothing. Intelligent, thoughtful, persistent people ignore them. And then there’s the rest of us.

These online offers are so intoxicating in their promises, and play so deftly on our desire to receive something—ANYTHING—for nothing, that we can’t help but be swayed by the mere inkling of a possibility of their truth. It’s so easy to be lured in.

I stared at the free iPod offer for all of 2 seconds. Being a writer and a dreamer, I thought I’d play along. Why not give it a try, see if I actually get the free iPod? Either way, it makes good fodder for a column, right? If I get the iPod, I could impress you all with a shocking bit of hope; and if I didn’t get it, well, honestly: did you expect any different?

So I responded to the free iPod Touch offer. I admit I was impressed by the picture of young David Finch, a friendly, college-age-looking kid, followed by the explaination of his offer. How could he give away such a pricey item? It was simple marketing! Apple WANTED us to have free iPods.

I posted the blurb to my Facebook page. I completed an associated offer (signing up for a text service) and voila! Requirements filled, gadget mine. It was so easy, I did it in seconds. In fact, I overdid it. After I Facebooked, I completed the initial offer… which sent me to another offer page (signing up for a “little know facts” text service), and yet another (a “this day in history” text service) and suddenly, 3 IQ tests, a “Is your relationship healthy?” quiz and “Who’s looking for you on the Internet” questionnaire later, I realized I’d completed several offers. If this were the Olympics, I’d have won a gold medal in Stupid.

And so I set about staring at my mailbox for the next 5 to 7 days. Awesome.

On day 11, I wrote an e-mail to the “webmaster” of the original offer site, inquiring as to when I would receive my hard-earned iPod. No response. On day 19, I tried again. Finally, by day 34, I decided to sleuth.

Googling revealed that the friendly college student was not, in fact, the real David Finch. The real David Finch  is a comic book artist. Or a director. Or someone… but whomever he is, he wasn’t that kid in the picture. Googling also revealed that the company listed in the copyright was not, in fact, in any way related to the industry offering the iPod Touch. Gosh. How odd.

Running the URL through Whois.net, the domain-owner lookup service, sent me in circles. The short story: no listing of a parent company, site owner, or point of contact.

In the end, I resorted to reading the site’s source code which, dear reader, is one of those things we web geeks like to do. It’s akin to sifting through someone’s laundry room; developers only like it to happen when their code is clean.  Suffice it to say I located the actual company in charge of the scam—ahem—SPECIAL INTERNET OFFER and called them. As expected, the phone tree sent me to a line answered by a robotic voice recording. As further expected, no one returned my message.

So there you have it. I’ll admit there is a secret part of me that really wanted a free goodie. Sadly, the pessimistic truth is, I knew it all along. Thus I remind myself as much as I warn you now: nothing in life is free—including completing offers on the internet for some “free” gift. Now then. If you’ll excuse me, I have a form I need to finish for this “Better than Botox” lotion I’ve been seeing ads for all over the place.