Scams

Scams

by Mike Masnick





Porn Site Bilked Users Out Of $230M

from the that's-quite-a-bit-of-cash dept

I guess the second less of scamming is that if you aren't scamming other scammers you should try to scam people looking at porn. It seems that some mobster set up "free tours" of porn sites, that actually ended up charging gullible users into paying $60/month. It's not entirely clear from the article how the scam worked - but basically, the got people to put in their credit card info to get the "free tour" (probably saying it was required as proof of age) and then just started charging them $60/month anyway. There's some talk about how the sites proceeded to "trap" them in the site (disabling the back button or hiding an "exit" button) but I'm not sure how that applies. What is an "exit button" anyway? The thing that amazes me is that they claim these guys scammed $230 million this way. That's an awful lot of $60/month charges.

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  1. No Kidding

    by Talislantian - Mar 19th, 2003 @ 8:02am

    Most of those charges were probably inccured by teens looking to "prove" they were adults.

    Many many warez sites are enlisted by the mob to get teens into these sites.

    The offer of "free" warez, "free" music, and "free" porn seem to be an ever increasing lure to the young, bored, and gullible.

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

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