How to stay safe with get paid to programs. Auto surfs, manual surfs, get paid to click, paid to promote, paid to read, paid to sign up and other types of get paid to programs. This is not only how to stay safe in the form of protecting your computer, and personal information but also how to avoid falling victim to scams. This is not a fail-proof guide, but instead just tips to improve your get paid to experience.
 

First of all I am going to cover computer safety:

#1 Use Mozilla Firefox, it’s the best for safety as far as my opinion goes. http://www.mozilla.com

#2 If you do not have virus protection download AVG FREE, it’s free to use and will aide in protecting your computer from viruses. http://free.avg.com

#3 Download an add-on for Firefox called no-script. This will prevent scripts from poping up on your computer and will stop pop-ups and other harmful material, to help in combination with your virus protection.https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/722/

#4 (Optional) Download the alexa.com toolar. This doesn’t really help you directly in any way, but if you have a site you are promoting in traffic exchanges or paid to clicks, it helps to raise your rank by pinging the site with the tool. http://www.alexa.com/toolbar?utm_source=top-nav&utm_medium=www&utm_campaign=toolbar

Now to cover the safety of the get paid to programs themselves:

Examine the site and make sure things aren’t too good to be true. Sites that offer more then 1.00$ for a single click are 100% of the time a scam. If you find one that offers 1.00$ or more per click, you should not even give it the time of day. You will not be paid, just think about if they had 50,000 members, clicking 15 ads a day that were 1$. That would be 750,000$ a day they would have to pay out, there is no way it can be done. Nobody can afford or would want to pay for the advertising it would have to cost for this. That would cost 1,000$ for 1,000 clicks just to break even, nobody would pay then, when you can get packages as low as 13 cents per 1,000 visitors and get the same results.

Another thing to look for is if the ads are all from the PTC owner themselves or are people actually buying ads. The money they pay you has to come from somewhere, so there must be a way for them to prove that they have a constant funding source to pay you from. If the site has a forum, with it’s payment proofs and other members suggestions / problems etc, this improves the chance that it’s a safe site. Just pay attention to things like how fast the admin replies, how many payment proof pictures are up etc.

Use google to search for complaints about the site, when joining a new program. Just type phrases like “program name review”, “program name payment proof” or “program name scam” etc. This will help you find what other people have to say about the program. If there is negative statements about the program, check to see if the program owner defended themselves or not. Check for multiple negative review, this is always a bad sign when you find more 3-5 bad reviews about not paying.  To go even further you can use google to find their hosting records, to see when the site was launched.

Sign up with different passwords for each site, now that you have a little bit of confidence in the program you are about to sign up for, always be sure to use a different password at first. You don’t want the owner to hi-jack your password and sign in on your account on another ptc, then just wait for you to get money to drain you out.\

Before you invest, always make sure you get a cash out. There’s a good chance that if they won’t pay you, you aren’t going to get what you pay for. That goes for advertisement purchases, account upgrades or whatever other services they offer.

In the event that you are not getting your payments, first thing you should do is take screen shots of evidence of things like your account earnings, the request cash out that is pending, the site, the forum and anything else that can help your future case. Then submit an email to the site owner, asking what is going on with the payment, list in the email that you are going to take further action if you do not get a reply within X amount of time, 72 hours is usually good. If you do not get a reply, or get some kind of canned response or something else that leads you to believe they are not going to rectify the situation, send another email threatening to report them to the following sites:

http://www.gptboycott.com/submit.php

http://www.ripoffreport.com/

http://www.ftc.gov/ftc/cmplanding.shtm (federal trade commission)

http://www.interpol.int/public/mail/mail3.asp?id=info (Interpol)

https://odr.bbb.org/odrweb/public/getstarted.aspx?siteID=93

https://complaint.ic3.gov/ctf.aspx ( The Internet Crime Complaint Center )

http://www.scamshield.com/ReportScam.asp

http://www.complaintsboard.com/

http://www.alexa.com/ (leave comments and feedback about a site to help warn others)

http://www.mywot.com (leave comments and alerts so others will see the warnings when they load the site)

http://www.recol.ca/ (For Canadians)

Even if you don’t really take the time to go through and report the site to all these sites, some of the site owners will pay you out of fear of this happening. You should never use any physical threats though, that could end up turning around on you to land you in trouble instead of them.

Update any pages you posted the site to letting everyone know the site is a scam, so that nobody else joins and goes through the same thing as you.