credit: John Glover

There is a great variety of ways to make money on the internet, which is good news for a lot of people. Unfortunately for every legitimate method of making money online there are a lot of people trying to scam your hard earned money out of you. The paid survey scam is no exception by taking advantage of the fact that so many people are interested in taking online surveys for money.

Even though it can be easy to learn how to avoid paid online survey scams, it helps to go a little further and think about what we can do to expose these scammers and put them out of business. Obviously there are so many of them that we can’t possibly get rid of them all, but for every scammer that we put out of business at least a few people are being saved and don’t lose money.

There are surveys that pay cash and there are reputable paid survey websites that list them. These can be found through talking to people who have been taking paid surveys for quite some time. The vast majority of these legitimate paid survey websites offer a free trial membership and are very good at consistently supplying members with money-making surveys.

Sometimes though, people are tempted to join paid membership survey sites after reading claims about high-paying surveys and the chance to earn up to a few thousands dollars each month. It is not unusual that the same people find themselves hardly earning any money through these websites, and many of them also find out that canceling their paid membership is difficult. They become victims of the paid survey scam.

One way to combat this type of paid survey fraud is to encourage people to talk about their experiences with these disreputable websites. Browse through discussion forums that are visited by people who make money online by taking surveys and ask them about the scams that they have come across.

Even though many people might be embarrassed to admit that they were scammed and lost their money, you can remind them of the fact that they do not have to reveal their names to you or any other personal information. You can also remind them that telling their story will help other people and might contribute to stop these scammers from making any more money.

Not all paid survey websites that charge membership fees are scams, although it can be extremely difficult to find the few legitimate ones. If you come across paid survey websites that want membership fees, there is one thing that you can do to find out if they are legitimate or if they are simply trying to run a paid survey scam. Check if they have a customer service phone number that you can call.

Scammers prefer not to reveal a phone number on which you can reach them - for obvious reasons. Any company that asks you to pay money for a service should provide a customer service phone number. Try to think of other ways to weed out the scam sites and then report what you’ve found to others. When you take some time to do this, you are not only doing yourself a favor but also help other people so that they don’t get ripped off.