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Our website provides information about online scams, online safety and related topics.
It is our intent to not only provide such information and hope people will find it somehow, but to bring the information to people who need it.
To do so, we used a rather uncommon approach.
We created pages which claim they give out specific free things, e.g. a free PlayStation gift card.
While people can actually get what is promoted on the pages, that is not the real purpose of them.
What we do with them is some kind of “reverse-phishing”. Instead of getting scammed, people get information on how to spot, avoid and report scams.
Phishing is the fraudulent attempt to obtain sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by disguising oneself as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.
The pages phish for people who actively search for terms which are overloaded with scams and yield no real usable results.
For example: The query “free PSN codes” (PSN = PlayStation) will return on average 90% scams for the first 100 results on Google and Bing.
The people, once they are on the reverse-phishing page, will get guided through a five-part guide on online scams and online safety. While most will not read the guide or only parts of it, it is still a more effective way to inform about these issues, than most online safety awareness campaigns.
We are open for other alternative ideas to inform about online safety and online scams. Contact us here.