Rules to avoid scam:
There are some procedures to avoid being scammed at will.
Consider:
1- PTC is to earn money, not to spend or invest. If you want to invest, go to a bank.
2- Every PTC will, sooner or later become a scam. The point is to know how long it will take.
3- There is no "trusted" site or administrator, except for a while. Trusted while it is paying.
So:
1- First, take a look at whois information. There you will see the name, e-mail and other informations about the administrator. A ptc that uses PrivacyProtect.org or somehow hides infos, cannot be trusted. Take the name and do a search in foro for a good or bad reference. To find whois info, go to http://whois.domaintools.com and paste the name of the site. Using Firefox, just download the FLAGFOX plug in. Free. Just click on the icon and all info is shown.
2- Never trust a site that runs under a free domain or a sub domain or free host. No money to pay host = no money to pay you. Generally they are free for one or three months, so the ptc disappears after this time and is usually run by a 13-15 aged child. Eg.: http://whatever.cc.co (two dots)
3- As less is the referral value, as more trusted the ptc is. Run away from sites that pays more than one cent per click. Generally, referral below 50% will last longer.
4- Advertising rate. A site that charges less than $10,00 per 1000 click and pays 1 cent per click will become a scam in few weeks. Obviously, the maths don´t match.
5- The site that has more than 1 self sponsored ad/day got a problem. More than two, got a great problem. History tells that these sites don´t last 6 months.
6- Always read TOS. Always. Some sites pays only upgraded, others don´t pay some countries, others have weird or tricky rules. Never submit personal info like proof of identity (except for Paypal, Alertpay or some well known payment processor).
7- A ptc that has a forum is better. They can manipulate/edit/delete posts and complaints. but it is useful to see if it is abandoned, if has fake proofs and to give us a general view. A forum without complaints is not trustful.
8- Do not believe in the owners´ statistics. Visit Alexa.com and other sites that shows the true number of daily visits. There are useful links in the tack board (homepage).
9- Follow the independent foro as TalkPTC. If the forum that you choose is owned by a PTC owner, its honesty and impartiality is compromised.
10- Any site that offers more than 1 cent per e-mail read is a scam for sure.
11- Use Firefox with NoScript, adblock and flagfos plugins. So, you will avoid sites that harm your computer.
12- Search in the scam list. before joining any site. If the site is listed, there is a good reason for that.
13- I suggest you use Kaspersky anti-hacker instead of the xp useless firewall. You can download it from my papaimark.blogspot, torrent, and plenty of places.
14- Avoid sites that promote CreditBruner and Pay-Ads, a icon or banner on the ptc site. Sabbie explained it very well: " Creditburner and others like it are ptp advertising networks. They pay site owners to advertise their ptp links. A lot of these ptp sites will use hidden iframes. Iframes are basically pages hidden in the page you are already viewing. The 0 in front of iframes is the size of the frame, meaning its there but has 0 visibility. You wont even know its there. 0-iframes are used to load sites onto your computer that you would normally not visit. Some can be harmless like visitor counters or geo-counters but most are very nasty. They can redirect you to porn sites but they can also download trojans or do autosearches on your computer. Normally ptp links will be worth up to about 50c per 1000 views. Creditburner and others like it will pay from 50c up to $5.00 per 1000 views. Its a very profitable business for most site owners but very bad for the members clicking the links. There are blacklists of sites using iframes and most forums won't allow those sites to be advertised. So if you join a site and you are having problems loading the site or your browser freezes look around and you will probably find banners for creditburner, pay-ads or vastgate. if you dont see the ads copy the url of the site into the jutaky detektor just to be sure. Even better, check all sites before joining."
More at http://iframedetector.awardspace.com and http://www1.webng.com/mvent2/#
15- "Actual values depends on site earnings." If you see this in TOS, be warned: If you be paid, it will be about 1% of your balance.
In General, this is bad:
> Whois protected,
> Non English ptc, (from poor countries)
> Free script (or stolen or pirate),
> Free host,
> Pre launch or beta version,
> More than 1¢ / click or view,
> TOS different from homepage (pirate script or laziness),
> Advertise pricing less than paying rates,
> Not verified payment processor,
> Self sponsored ads,
> Advertising values under registration (to get 0 click referrals),
> Paying rates depending on site earnings,
> Owner of the site has scammed before in other ptcs,
> Use of buggy or unsafe scripts to run the site, (yob, gen2, home made scripts)
> The "bux.to" style that is very easy to cheat and all turn into scam in few weeks,
> Sites hosted by BuxHost or gptnetworks. (These kids are full of good intentions but
empty of experience.) Normally, pays for few weeks.
PapaiMark - The best paying ptc sites
