ReadWriteWeb recently ran a post called “Facebook Wants to Be Your One True Login” which apparently attracted a lot of people that mysteriously believed that ReadWriteWeb was suddenly FaceBook itself…despite two obvious pieces of evidence to the contrary:
- A gigantic ReadWriteWeb logo at the top of the page.
- A little thing called an ADDRESS BAR which had readwriteweb.com in it
It got so bad that ReadWriteWeb had to put a huge message at the top of the screen stating:
“Dear visitors from Google. This site is not Facebook. This is a website called ReadWriteWeb that reports on news about Facebook and other Internet services.”
And also included the following helpful “tip”:
“For future reference, type “facebook.com” into your browser address bar or enter “facebook” into Google and click on the first result. We recommend that you then save Facebook as a bookmark in your browser.”
A friend of mine thought this was the funniest thing he’d ever seen and demanded I view it immediately.
What he didn’t know was how much me and many OTHER websites reporting on internet scams have already experienced this phenomenon.
We get people demanding refunds from us on products we are WARNING them about at an alarming rate…in other words the fact that MANY people DO NOT READ carefully at all while online is OLD NEWS to us.
I get emails and posts on the blog on a regular basis from people stating things like:
“IMMEDIATELY CANCEL MY MEMBERSHIP.
ANY ATTEMPS ON YOUR PART TO CHARGE MY CREDIT CARD WILL RESULT IN CRIMINAL CHARGES BEING FILED”
To which I respond:
“You’re writing to the wrong website.
You’re writing to a site that WARNS
people about scams and helps them
recover money.
What product are you talking about. Maybe
I can help you figure out what to do to get
your money back.
Paul Schlegel
Founder, WorkAtHomeTruth.com”
The site at IveTriedThat has experienced the same phenomenon and wrote an entire post about it here:
We are not running a Google scam. You’re currently reading IveTriedThat.
In which they go on to explain:
“That’s right. People are landing on our website, reading our warnings to not give any money or information to these scammers, then they somehow are lead to believe that we are the ones operating these websites. How? I honestly have no idea. Maybe it was this line that was causing confusion: “Don’t do business with Google Treasure Chest and most certainly do not give them your private information.”
Or how about the parody site MakeMoneyPostingALinkOnGoogle.com which is OBVIOUSLY a parody site since the Kevin Hoeffner at the site claims that he made 10 BILLION Dollars Posting A Link On Google…but STILL received the following comments:
“Joey here…Why do you promote such scams like this…You and Kevin are such scumbags. (You can see Kevin’s website @ http://www.blogspersonal.com/?1=pt&2=clks&3=1222#), which has similar information regarding Google.
ALL OF THIS IS A SCAM….DON’T DO IT. THEY WILL STEAL YOUR LIFE FORTUNE…..THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS….”
By the way, is there a corollation between people who don’t pay attention online and those who type in GIGANTIC ALL-CAPS?
Anyhow, a few final tips…
Right now you are on the site WorkAtHomeTruth. Here are a few ways you can tell:
It SAYS SO in the Address Bar:
It SAYS SO in GIGANTIC letters at the top of the site:
Anyhow, thanks for visiting ReadWriteWeb. 
Man, if I had a dollar for every time someone threatened to sue me, I’d never have to work another day in my life.
Great article Paul. It’s just sad that we have to post these announcements.
I love your final line: “Thank you for visiting readwriteweb.”
What’s really instructive about this is how confusing the internet is for many, many people. When Apple announced their new iPad, lots of technical people jumped all over how limited it is, how it doesn’t do XYZ esoteric thing a techie would want, how it’s a walled garden that doesn’t let you do stuff…
But when you start to see how confusing questions like “What website am I at?” are for many, many people, you start to see a device that guides you and hopefully helps protect you from yourself is actually a pretty important idea.
Anyway, I hate this new redesign of faceblook, PLEZZ LET ME INN1!!!1!!
Yeah Paul. I’ve had a few of these.
It’s all really an aspect about techno-confusion and the busy haste into which people are now coerced to run their lives.
TV shows are now made with short chunks to fit into folks’ attention span which is barely more than a 10 second advert.
Microwave meals. Fast food. In-car navigation.
It’s all part of the minimalist-thinking approach. So why should we expect anything else within the web?
Of course, this is exactly the core method that the scammers suck people into their schemes, isn’t it? They take advantage of our human fallibilities, impatience being one of them, and the net result (pun intended) is that the web is one huge melange where for a non-techy user, a website’s appearance is more important than it’s content.
Hence the confusion.
@Strangely Perfect: I’m convinced that if I put up a review of one of those hidden negative option products and said, “This is the worst product ever. Do NOT try it.” and then put an affiliate link – I’d be a very wealthy man.
There was research presented in the 2007 FTC workshop on negative option workshop talking about the state of mindless flow people get into on the net – they called it “click happiness”.
You know the country comedian.. Heres your sign.. or how about this…. if you cant figure out what site you are on.. you might be a dumbass