I am thoroughly sick and tired of browsing the Internet and coming across brazen scams. They are lined up like basking crocodiles, jaws gaping wide open, waiting to devour the unwary. They promise untold riches for as little as energy as you wish to expend.

Enter the words “home working” or “business opportunity” with any search engine you care to name and these devious adverts pour down your telephone line and onto your screen with undisguised glee. Peppered with exclamation marks, underlining and asterisks they shout their invitations to wealth and fortune in their own unmistakable style! Their promises are almost as unbelievable and bizarre as their punctuation.

The insulting thing is that their seductive illusions are so hard to sustain with logical argument that they resort to anything else that occurs to them to avoid having you pause for thought. They are rife with examples of people who have benefited from their brilliant methods and breathtaking insight.

All too often, the seller in person can reveal themselves as a shining example. They quote from bitter experience how hard it is to get by on a tight budget and how they struggled against adversity. Deliverance was, with monotonous regularity, close at hand, usually coming when they discovered the one and only sure way of making money.

At this point, you may wonder why they would be willing to share this with you. What overpowering urge of charity drives them to bestow their special gift on you? Can they not sleep at night unless they do so secure in the knowledge that you are saved? Obviously, you need to skip this paragraph. You have already started to ask the wrong questions.

The adverts I am describing must constantly jostle to attract your attention. They must sell you on their system to the exclusion of all others. Under these circumstances it is not good enough to promise the Earth, if the advert next to you is throwing in a handful of neighbouring stars as well! They pitch their fanciful claims higher and higher in a dizzying auction of the preposterous. “Earn hundreds of dollars!”, claims one, opening the bidding. “Earn thousands of dollars!” declares another. “Earn tens of thousands of dollars!” protests a third. “Earn millions of dollars” bawls another. “Earn whatever you want!” shrieks one, in clear exasperation!

These adverts would be nothing more than a joke if it were not for their more sinister side. These adverts trade in equal measure on desperation and on gullibility. They tug at the sleeve of those least able to afford to loose money and whisper dreams of sports cars, swimming pools and coral beaches to the needy. For those whose heartfelt wish is simply to pay off their credit card and get back on an even keel, this sparkling wonderland of easy wealth is a paradise they dare not miss!

In this circus of the implausible, what hope for the ordinary performer? What chance is there for the advertiser who promises “a reasonable income” or “decent earnings” or, perish the thought, “good rewards for hard work”? With everybody else shouting their heads off through a megaphone, what chance of a sane conversation?

The “scamsters” of the Internet have barely a nodding acquaintance with scruples. They have lost all contact with honesty and cannot even remember the dialling code for shame. They want other people’s money with a passion and they don’t really care how much misery they leave in their wake.

One qualification for running a good scam is obvious, and funnily enough it isn’t having a sewer rats as parents. The qualification is bared-faced cheek.

Imagine being sold on the idea that you can emulate one of these people’s success and parting with a very modest $5 for the trouble. You may well receive in return a run down on how to look for advertising sites on the internet, maybe a list of some sites to start you off. The nub of the idea you have bought, however, may well be the very ruse that has just been played on you. Snare a hundred a week , just how you were snared, collect your $5 and pack them off to hunt for their own victims. This is a very old scam, but one that is playing to packed audiences at an advertising location near you!

How about trying your hand at selling “Research Documents”, “Business Studies” or “Commercial Handbooks”? There are plenty of sites charming the punters with these! The product, as often as not, is several pages of quite lame logic and banal observations on a given subject. A subject of which they never manage to scratch the surface. Your pages of profound wisdom will make complete superficiality shine like a beacon. You have bought the merest hint of a product. It is the tissue-thin pretence of a valid item. It will be of less worth than the time spent downloading it. What they really wanted was your money. What you really have to do now is sell it to somebody else and hope you can hold your head up once you’ve done it!

The real problem on the internet is that the audience is so large. Rip off a local resident at the counter of your high street shop and you can expect the news to spread like wildfire, leaving you with an empty shop with no customers. On the World Wide Web, however, you can dupe and hoodwink a constant stream of “passers-by” and know that there are thousands more right behind them.

One definite encouragement to prospective scam artists is that there are far too many Internet advertising sites who value the revenue of their advertisers more highly than the misery of their victims. Cranking the handle of the “money machine” cannot be slowed simply to apply a bit of responsibility! It is almost as if the Web Site host is declaring the advertisers’ quarry valid if snared.. They imply, by their contempt for regulation, that nobody in their right minds would believe these advertisers in the first place!

Internet searchers, looking to find extra income, should not expect to be wrapped in cotton wool and treated like toddlers; but by the same token, they should not expect to be paraded before thieves or dangled in front of pickpockets as a matter of course! No self respecting bank would expect to populate its cash dispenser lobbies with muggers and stay aloof from the results!

If the motto for the shopper is “let the buyer beware”, then the motto for the seeker of extra earnings on the internet should be “take claims of easy money with a pinch of salt and then reserve a bucket full for your second thoughts”!

If there is one pearl of wisdom that shines brighter than any other, it is this: IF IT SOUNDS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE, THEN IT USUALLY IS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE!

If you want to find an “earnings” advert that delivers its promises, then shy away from Web Sites that look like an explosion has occurred in an exclamation mark factory! The more the capital letters, the less the truth. The more the underlining, the less the honesty. Start out disbelieving and seek to be converted……. never, but never, do it the opposite way round!

This is probably the last time you will ever see six exclamation marks in a line with no catch involved!!!!!! Have them on me!

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