Just a note to be careful on Facebook using Farmville and Mafia Wars. I see these app’s flying around Facebook all the time. No one ever thinks about who is behind them and what their goals are. Now, its a fair argument – no one does anything for free on these kind of sites. Even I use advertising on this blog to help pay for it. But it goes a step too far when it used to extort unreasonable fees for signing up. Especially when it targets innocent young users.
Tech Crunch wrote an interesting article on this. In the comments over there, they are getting a lot of knocks for stating it so publically. Makes you wonder why?
Original article available here I have updated the information here. Farmville CEO admits guiltExamples Of Scams:
A typical scam: users are offered in game currency in exchange for filling out an IQ survey. Four simple questions are asked. The answers are irrelevant. When the user gets to the last question they are told their results will be text messaged to them. They are asked to enter in their mobile phone number, and are texted a pin code to enter on the quiz. Once they’ve done that, they’ve just subscribed to a $9.99/month subscription. Tatto Media is the company at the very end of the line on most mobile scams, and they flow it up through Offerpal, SuperRewards and others to the game developers. As you can see in the image below, nothing in the offer says that the user will be billed $10/month forever for a useless service.
Another scam: Video Professor. Users are offered in game currency if they sign up to receive a free learning CD from Video Professor. The user is told they pay nothing except a $10 shipping charge. But the fine print, on a different page from checkout, tells them they are really getting a whole set of CDs and will be billed $189.95 unless they return them. Most users never return them because they don’t know about the extra charge. Woot. Again, sites like Offerpal and SuperRewards flow these offers through to game developers. See here for more on the Video Professor scam. Of course, there’s no mention of any of these payments in the offer itself:
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9 Responses to “Warning Facebookers: Are You Playing Scamville – Sorry, I Mean Farmville?”
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There is another danger too …
If you religiously play any of these game, there’s a good chance some of your FB friends (like me) will either delete you as a friend or put you on ignore, so that their news feed isn’t constantly full up with inane waffle like “So & So has just earned a Level 7 Cow” or “Bought a double barrelled uzi” or whatever …
Cannot disagree with this point…
I like farmville, tis a bit of a laugh=but yeah I can see how getting sent cows might be a pain if you don’t actually play the game. you can buy some stuff in the game with real currency but to me that is just stupid, plus it’s more fun paying for stuff from the money you make on your crops, a bit of a waste of time but you could argue that facebook is a waste of time all together…
I agree.. I played a little.. but found it overwhelming and annoying.. However, the point in me posting this is because I can imagine the younger ones popping the mobile number in and not realizing what happens next. I saw so much of this when I work in Carphone.. Kids credit being “stolen”… not fair..
To be honest, I find it hard to believe that anyone uses the FB apps when, before you can use it, there’s a big fat disclaimer giving the program access to all of your FB data! And for what? To play a nonsense quiz that will tell you what your next kid’s going to be called??
sometimes boredom… gets me sometimes
Well there’ll be plenty to occupy you when your identity gets stolen!
Can’t I just hire me to fix it?
Nice work.