Paid Survey Sites And Identity

Angel153

Hi,

newbie here, so apologies if this has been asked before - I had a quick search round, and couldn't find anything about it, but I'm aware it might be buried deep within the gazillions of pages here. I had no idea this forum was so huge! :eek:

I am in the process of joining paid survey sites, and I would like to know if it's necessary to use your real name when registering.

I've joined Crowdology and i-Say so far, but am having difficulty sorting the wheat from the chaff re: other sites as pretty much all of them seem to have both "Brilliant! Highly recommended" AND "Thieves and Shysters - avoid!" reviews. I want to join as many as I can, but I want to know the site is trustworthy, obviously! I am hoping people here will know. The other thing I've found is that these sites seem to change over time, so a site with brilliant reviews in 2010 now has rubbish reviews for 2015. It's doing my head in, tbh! I could really use some guidance.

I am wary of the endless potential for identity theft online, and indeed declined to provide financial information and say whether I engage in online banking and ebay auctions on a survey sent to me today from Samplicio.us via Crowdology. The email said it was a paid survey from Crowdology, but it linked straight through to this Samplicio.us page. I didn't know they did that. I was rejected at the end of both surveys.

A search on Samplicio.us leads me to believe that this company never allow anyone to qualify for a genuine survey, but instead are all about gathering sensitive information. Hmmm..........Apart from wanting to know about online banking etc, they wanted to know if I have any fraud protection measures in place on my computer, and exactly what those measures are. I think that's a bit suspect.

I did set up a separate email address for these survey sites (i-say and Crowdology) so I could see if joining them generated any spam email. But one of the Crowdology profiling surveys (no payment, just info to let them match surveys to you) kind of forced me in to saying I had a Facebook account. I am now getting American email spam on the email address associated with my Fb account, so I'm wishing I hadn't admitted to having a Fb account! If they hadn't got my real name, they wouldn't have been able to get that email address. But no spam so far to the email address I used to sign up with. It's possible that it's a coincidence, but they've all gone to the same Unsubscribe page, so this batch have all come from the same place.

It seems a complete minefield as regards the potential for unwanted mail and or phone calls, and I can see potential for identity theft as well. If you give your real name and admit to having any online accounts, then they must be able to access information about you within those accounts. If you don't use your real name for these sites, presumably that would offer some protection from them getting information attached to your real identity, wouldn't it? How do other survey site users deal with this sort of thing?

Again with Crowdology, I have said No to participating in telephone surveys and haven't given my phone number, because I can just see how many extra cold calls that would generate, and also No to having thingys placed on my computer so they can track my online behaviour. I don't want them to have access to anything financial online. I really don't want keylogging malware dropped onto my computer!

Yes, I've read the guide on here about the top ten survey sites, but further searching online reveals a degree of problems/issues with almost all of them, and reputations changing over time.

Crowdology was recommended in an article in The Telegraph, where the journo had tried and tested several sites, so it said, but now I'm wondering if I was daft to think The Telegraph review conferred any respectability to this site :undecided

So is it really necessary to use your real name, or is using an alias ok? Or am I just being paranoid here?

Any tips anyone here can offer me would be very much appreciated, including sites you know to be trustworthy in terms of not trying to get sensitive information out of you, or bombarding you with spam. I can probably live with spam, if it's completely unavoidable, but I am concerned about this attempted gathering of sensitive information.

Thank you for reading my first post And thanks in advance for any replies I get! :j

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Angel153

PS Just found out that Crowdology need my email address to be the same as the email address attached to my PayPal account......and you can't have more than one ordinary, free, PayPal account. So much for setting up a separate email address!

Does anyone know if this applies to ALL survey sites? I researched tons before I started this, and everyone recommended setting up a separate address. Or can you simply add another email address to an existing PayPal account? Off to check........

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Angel153

Ooh, good. Apparently you can have up to eight email addresses per PayPal account. Problem solved. :T

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KxMx

Been with I Say for years, average earnings are around £60-£80 a year, I take mine in Amazon vouchers.

Done several product tests too

System

You should be using your real name, likewise you should be paying tax on any earnings you make online...

It is entirely up to you whether you choose to do that though.

I use my genuine details, have done for years, and I've never had a problem. I am also registered as self-employed with HMRC and file a tax return every year. I've also never had to provide ID to any of these companies to prove who I am. So in theory I imagine you don't have to give the details if you don't want to, although you should be doing so, because you should be declaring your earnings.

If you have some specific questions on surveys feel free to PM me as I forget to check back when I post to people sometimes but I earn £100s a month from surveys.

Angel153

KxMx wrote: »

Been with I Say for years, average earnings are around £60-£80 a year, I take mine in Amazon vouchers.

Done several product tests too

Thanks, KxMx. Was the product testing through I-Say as well, or are you with other companies for that?

Can you recommend any companies that do product testing, or do you wait to be invited by a survey company you've signed up with?

I'm not sure how it works. All I've managed to work out so far is that there are no genuine companies who offer anyone the chance to test and keep iPhones etc!

Are you with anyone other than I-Say?

Thanks again,
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KxMx

Yes the product testing was through I Say.

I'm on general survey sites only not product testing ones. So any product tests come as a result of being invited through a survey.

I'm also with NewVistaLive and reckon with their fairly recent Toluna partnership I can get two payouts (£50) a year now, up from one every 9 months roughly. I also did 1 product test through a NVL partner survey.

NVL are different to I Say in terms of points and payouts.

I Say offer £10 vouchers for 1380 points. Points 99% of the time show immediately.

NVL offer £50 cheque payout once you reach 5000 points

NVL survey points credit within a few minutes. Partner surveys are credited at the end of the month so I put any successful survey emails into a folder and cross check when the points have been added.

Angel153

Thanks, KxMx, good to know.

Do you find the points sometimes don't get added?

Interesting about the Toluna partnership.....have seen somewhere people complaining about Toluna. But that's why I'm here, trying to get real recommendations from real users, so thanks for the info

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PS What products have you tested?

elsien

I use my real name, amended date of birth, and have an email address and an old PAYG phone for telephone details. The spam email has gone nuts but I've never had any spam phone calls.

Angel153

Just on the NVL site - they seem to want address and phone numbers - have you got any cold calls or junk mail from giving them this info? Obv for product testing they need your address, but I thought that would be asked as and when they wanted to offer a test product. I-Say haven't asked for my address yet, but I have just done my first survey for them, yay!

This is the sort of thing I'm a bit wary of, giving out all my personal contact details. They even want an alternative email address when I've set up a separate one deliberately.

Were you happy to give out all your contact details? Am I, as I asked in my original post, just being paranoid?

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Angel153

Thanks, Elsien. I haven't got an alternative mob to use, and am a bit reluctant to give out personal phone details unless a company want me to do a phone survey, which I wouldn't agree to do until I was sure of a company.

And how nuts has your junk mail gone? Another 100 a week, more, less?

Thanks again for your response I've used an amended d.o.b too

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