A few weeks ago I received my annual request to make a donation to Wikipedia. I do not like being asked for money. Then I remembered that they do not serve any adverts on their pages, and that this is how they cover their costs.
We published our first scam review in 2011. At the time I made a decision that our much needed free service, would follow the model of public television, and cover it's costs with advertising and selected sponsorship.
We work hard to block "nasty" adverts. We have laid them out to be part of our site's visual appeal. They are kept away from the content. They try to be sociable. They are not allowed to jump in your face, block you from reading, or hang about after you are done here.
Our company adTumbler, Inc. has sponsored this community project, and will continue to do so. But we are losing ground to the information scam industry, which has more money and resources than we do.
It takes a lot of work for us to promote a scam review to the first page of results for a Google search. We must do our research. Write a fair and balanced review. Publish the content and work with SEO technologies to get it found.
This guarantees that a concerned reader can find our scam review, and be alerted to the probable scam. Every day we warn many hundreds of readers all around the world. The reader then clicks away with their needs satisfied.
We are happy for we have done our work. Our advertisers and sponsors are happy as we have done nothing to entice wrongful clicks or fake interest in their services.
I have to ask you all to - PAY IT FORWARDS - for without this we can not fight this battle. The scam artists can afford to pay many people to do this. We can not. All we have is a community and a willingness to help each other.
I will not do this by sneaking your Facebook contact list or any other such trickery. I ask you to pay it forwards as is appropriate to you. If you have been helped, please can you step up and do your bit to help everyone else.
Our scam reviews are getting found, and because of this scam artists and organized crime are losing money.
We have hired a top security expert, we have implemented hardened version of PHP, and Linux and a whole bunch of other stuff I will not discuss. We have shut down all automated registrations to post content.
We love finding real users who can share their stories. The only way I know to tell that you are a real person with interest in our community values is to email you privately. There are many who contact us, only for me to find that they are some offshore "time waster" with nothing but malice in their heart!
I will not compromise the security of this site. I could think of nothing worse than publishing pages that alert people to energy scams, then getting hacked and spreading an unsociable Internet virus.
Please Contact us with any suggestions you have on how we can better win this battle.
Get Smart about Energy™