Odds&Ends Investigation of Hippiepay
Hippiepay's claim:
User goes to a vendor, gets redirected to a website where they can fill
out surveys for cash.
Our investigation of this showed that although some people do get token
amounts of cash, most do not. Additionally there is no way to track which
user actually filled out any of the surveys (by losing track of the
user, this means that the vendor promoting hippiepay would also not be
able to be paid the correct amount for the user's actions).
Summary of results
Hippiepay does not seem to be able to account for which users REALLY fill
anything out. THEY get money for people following links, but have no way
to track it back to "you". Meanwhile the surveys are mostly signups for
information which ask for your e-mail address and other information so
that the advertisers can target you with direct mail and e-mail campaigns.
How we tested
Here are the basic tests I did and why I came up with this theory:
* Used HP terminal as user1 coming from 67.52.X.X
* Used HP terminal as user2 coming from 66.240.X.X
* Used HP terminal as user3 coming from 77.214.X.X
(2 seperate computers from 3 networks - for the final test I cleared
cache and cookies before reconnecting on verizon wireless as user3 again)
* Agreed to the terms of service as all 3 users
* All 3 clicked on the first link (singles dating site). ALL of the users
were redirected to the same final URL which means the final site does not
know which vendor or which unique user we were other than possibly by IP
address. The URL all went to was this one:
http://www.singlesnet.com/?affiliate_id=50&keyword=5637&affil=5637&AFFID=CD2565
..the affiliate ID information makes sure that the hippiepay service gets
credit, but has no information for the SecondLife vendor or user at this point.
* As user3 I went to a terminal in Ello for all of the tests, I went ahead
and followed through providing my e-mail address on a link that says
"Toshiba vs Humax DVD Recorder with TiVo Give them your email, and get
rewarded instantly. This offer should payout between $74 L and $76 L". The
actual URL was:
http://www.cpalead.com/offer.php?id=3000&pub=426&sub=7437
which forwarded to:
http://myselectgifts.com/rd_p?p=101082&c=9764-toshibavshumaxdvr_emc_d30a&a=5999&affil=5999&subid=2555
There were no funds given to user3 for providing the information.
Given the lack of tracking ability for if the surveys are really getting
filled out once the user moves from the HP website to the survey websites,
I question the data HP is using to make payments to it's vendors or
end-users. Since some people claim to be getting paid it is believed that
the payments are token payments to keep people from thinking it is a scam.
Note: I did e-mail the Hippiepay contact address with the above test
results to ask for clarification. To date, they have not responded.