How About Some Spam With That Free iPhone?

Sick of iPhone ads? It gets worse. If you've run a search lately for Apple's big hoopla device, you've no doubt noticed sponsored ads promising it to you for free, like this one on a Google results page:





Those icons are from some nice free browser plugins that check search results. The green one is from LinkScanner and indicates that the site at least shouldn't launch an Internet attack. The red icon is from SiteAdvisor, warning that if you give the site your e-mail address, you can expect to get a bunch of spam in your inbox.

That spam seems to be a major point of these crap sites, according to Shane Keats of McAfee's SiteAdvisor. They'll walk you through a process of filling out surveys and sponsor offers that turn into as much of a pain in the arse as possible in an attempt to make you ditch. The practice is known as "breakage," according to Keats, and sites like these can typically "break" 95 percent or more of the people who start the process.

If you can somehow stomach it all and fill out everything that's required, the terms and conditions for eashfreecellphones.com say you'll end up with "trial offers for memberships, credit cards, subscriptions, services or products offers. Typically, there are a variety of offers presented for your selection and some offers require a trial or purchase while other offers require an ongoing subscription."

Sounds about as smart as rolling around in fish and swimming with crocodiles. And of course, to even get to the lovely offers you have to give away the goods. Another junk site, unclaimedfree.net, starts by having you fill in your e-mail right away:





According to SiteAdvisor's analysis, if you filled in that simple little box, you can expect a flood of more than 200 spammy e-mails per week on such fascinating topics as "Lose Weight w/our Challenge!" and "Looking for a Hot Date?"

So as usual, free isn't really free. If you're curious about more such scams, Ben Edelman has done some good research on the topic.

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