Survey businesses legitimacy questions

Scams
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Hi @djinau, welcome to the community.

I would be very concerned as well. I hadn’t heard of them until your post. Doing a bit of digging and a bit more, it appears the main complaint of its registered members is that payouts of accrued points as cash often doesn’t happen. This also raises alarm bells to the business’s practices.

There are many survey apps and websites which are data harvesters. Like social platforms (Facebook, Google etc), user data is valuable and harvesting is core part of their business…

Survey Junkie is an online market research community that is wholly owned by DISQO, Inc. (www.disqo.com). DISQO is a market research, consumer insights, and analytics platform that sells and delivers data and analytics to the market research industry and various business clients. We believe consumers like you deserve better products and services, and we built Survey Junkie to help you share information with brands and market researchers, so they better understand consumers (source Survey Junkie Terms - I have bolded the key words).

Their privacy policy is also an interesting read and includes personal information they collect on users.

Data becomes even more valuable when it can be verified and attached to a specific person, as the data can be used to profile individuals and as such, becomes more valuable when sold (as they disclose they do in the above terms). As www.disqo.com was set up 'to bring people and business together in a valuable exchange of information to improve data quality.', it is not surprising they are after government validated identification to meet this outcome.

Requesting government validated form of identification would be gold to them, as not only would is validate their data but data others collect. This can be done by linking common online identifiers (IP address, email address etc) to a real, validated person. Gold for those who collect data as the most important key has been provided voluntarily by a user.

Would I give them my government validated ID, no, unless I was comfortable posting the same information on any online platform for the world to see. While they won’t be posting it online in the same way, giving it to them allows them to use as they chose.

I also can guess you have amassed a reasonable amount of points/cash with them. Locking your account if you have a reasonable amount of redeemable points/cash means a user is more likely to be forthcoming in providing the requested government validated identification. It is simple psychology, put a bowl of chocolates in the middle of the table…all for one to enjoy. They let you smell and watch the chocolates, but you can’t have one unless you agree to something they say…of course most give in as the temptation becomes stronger than the will to refuse.

One can opt out by filling in their webform requesting the data they will/have collected on you isn’t on sold…but how many users would do this and what are the repercussions if you do (some are outlined in their Terms, but suspect that Survey Junkie reserves the right to change, modify, or eliminate, and/or restrict or block access to, all or any part of the Services, without notice, at any time, for any reason or no reason.). And being a US company based in the US, if they fail to honour such a request and allow access to their platform, what is the likelihood a little Aussie will take them on through the US legal system.

Unless one is comfortable with any of the above, I would be avoiding them with the biggest barge pole I could find (preferably one that extends from Australia to the US).

I am not sure how comfortable you are with the above. If you aren’t, it might be worth filling in the webform (hoping it has some effect) and moving on…taking the time and cash lost as a lesson to take forward with you into the future.

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22

Do not have anything to do with Survey Junkie @djinau You will never see any money from them .

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23

Thanks phb for your words of wisdom and confirming my suspicions. Fortunately I don’t have a very large balance with them at the moment (I had way more last August). I won’t be sending them any ID (as far as I know there is only one photo of me on the internet and I’m actually not named), but I will continue to pursue them for the money (just for fun) to see how far it goes. However, I will be lodging complaints about their dodgy practices with the various government organisations both over there and here.

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24

Welcome to the forum. I have moved your question to an existing thread which deals with questions such as yours. Please have a read through the proceeding posts to know that your suspicions are not unique, and with other survey organisations as well.

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25

My first thought on reading your post about the requirement of an official photo, both sides, was passport fabrication.
I would run very fast away from this mob.

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26

Thanks Gregr I hadn’t thought of that, I was concerned about identity theft but not that far. They claim it is needed to prove I’m not a bot, but I reckon there must be more to it.

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27

If you are interested, do a search on “fake drivers licence”, or “fake passport”.
There are many sites offering to produce such things.
Your legitimate details on a document with someone else’s picture.
Or if not a physical document, then details that would go a long way to meeting the 100 point rule for establishing a bank account.
Very dodgy indeed.

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28

Noticed we are all still waiting for an answer on this one from BenD?

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29

Thanks, will do.

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Out of the blue a couple of years ago Facebook demanded this of me supposedly to validate my FB account. At first I was suspicious that it may have been hackers, but later satisfied myself that it was really FB.

I steadfastly refused because I do not trust the information will only be used for good and/or even stored securely. Bear in mind that this was around the time when there were some doozy data breaches when thousands of peoples information was stolen.

Despite asking repeatedly why they needed it, and what they were going to use it for I got no response. I refused to provide the documentation and subsequently my account was closed down; but I saw that as a very small price to pay to maintain the security of my identity information.

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I can understand that that would be required if you wanted a FB verified badge next to your userid. Most users don’t need or want that.

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32

A good suggestion, but I didn’t know of, want, or ask for the verification. Nor was I expressing any views or publishing material that might have excited the suspicion of their algorithms. So I’m bemused as to why they wanted photo ID verification.

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It looks more and more like this I just got an email from them commenting that I cashed out 27 days ago and I can cash out again now. Only problem is that the account is still locked, I think you’re right it is like a bowl of chocolates.

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34

I looked at Surveyz and they wanted my bank Customer ID number and password, this looks like the way I get into my account. I can’t see what would stop them using my account, and if not them some hacker.

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35

As others have already advised, don’t provide those details.

Note also depending on how information such as account ID’s and passwords are sent across the internet or via email they are likely not secure from being stolen by third parties.

That @BenD who previously claimed to represent Surveyz has gone silent, is a significant warning sign.

Are you able to provide a link or screen shot of the content requesting those details?

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36

I hope this comes out

image
image1366×768 82.2 KB

Can you see it? There is NO WAY they’re getting this information.

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@BenD, identified as Ben Dixon in his profile, is the CEO of Data Analytic Holdings P/L/Fonto. Without evidence to the contrary it is a reasonable conclusion he represents Surveyz.

Whether his continued attention to the questions posed here could or would assuage doubts, or reinforce them, is another matter.

38

I have encountered a number of web sites that share data. This appears to be consistent with the advertising/program Surveyz offers to those willing to sign up. If one trusts the system, it provides account access to Surveyz servers. A question is how much of that data is de-identified.

The ‘program’ is market research for targeting advertising.

Years ago numerous banks offered to display one’s accounts at other banks through a pass-through display. It was sold as a convenience since one only had to set it up once to use it routinely rather than log in to each account individually. I’ll not comment on that. It has been a while since I have seen them again as the general user base has gotten more security concious :wink:

A worry is that it appears the data sharing is initiated on the surveyz web site, not on the Westpac web site, but that could be a technology issue. Still a matter of trust, specifically blind trust at that level.

Was there something else to see?

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39

Fair comment.
Many of us sign up on line to a wide variety of sites, and provide varying amounts of personal information. We can all make a choice. However there is a varying level of net literacy across the community. How can all be assured the choice is properly informed?

Personally, I’d be extremely concerned with what is being collected from accounts as they also relate to personal transactions, share trading or borrowings. All of these are accessible from a single internet banking login.

We only have one source of information at this point in time. I’d expect any request to approve access to the suggested content by a third party to come through my banks secure email, accessible when logged into banking. Surely there is a better way to facilitate the outcome, if one is agreeable, that does not require sharing direct access to personal internet banking?

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40

There should be, but my experience with the Australian banking sites suggests there might not be. Without access to ‘the account’ how does one get ‘the data’? They are inextricably inter-related.

I use Quicken (US version) and have credit cards and financial institutions enabled to share my data with it. Setting it up starts with a pass through that is obviously the card/financial institution I am interacting with, not Quicken itself. Each target institution does its own thing from OTPs or requiring agreement to a set of T&Cs followed by emailed verification handshakes. At the completion the ‘handshake’ is transferred back to Quicken to download the account data. It is a once off setup per institution.

The image @djinau posted looks like as basic and possibly security free (at that stage) as it could get. Yet a user has no visibility to what is happening behind the curtains so care is warranted.

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