Anonymous Internet Banking

My partner would like to set up an anonymous and secure Internet Bank account. He'd rather not use PayPal. Any suggestions?

http://wachovia.com

2007-02-13 19:27:20 by mattysensei

Anonymous Offshore Bank Accounts

Thank you for your interest in the Mystery Shopper position.
Our company conducts surveys and evaluates other companies in order to help them achieve their performance goals.
We offer an integrated suite of business solutions that enables corporations to achieve tangible results in the marketplace.


We get hired by other companies and act like customers to find out how they are handling their services in relation to their customers.


Mystery Shopping is the most accurate and reliable tool a business can use to gather information regarding their actual customer service performance at the moment of truth. This moment of truth is not when the staff is on their best behavior because the boss is around - it is when they interact with customers during their normal daily routines.


This is where you, the Mystery Shopper, come in. You pose as an ordinary customer and provide feedback of both factual observations (ex...the floor was free of debris) and your own opinions (ex...I felt that the temperature in the establishment was too cold).


Mystery Shoppers must remain anonymous. You must act as a regular customer and be careful not to do anything that would reveal you as a shopper. An inexperienced shopper could tip off the staff to his/her identity by asking for the manager's name for no clear or appropriate reason. If you are going to be bringing someone with you on the shop, make sure you educate them about the process as well. Beware that even whispers can be overheard by employees. If anyone notices you are a shopper, you can bet that word will quickly spread around the establishment and you will get some of the best customer service in town.


No company can afford to have a gap between the promise of quality and its actual delivery, that's why leading corporations look to us, the nation's premiere mystery shopping and customer experience measurement company.


In order for a business to effectively compete in today's economy, they must be prepared to meet the challenge of increasing sales by:
* Retaining existing customers
* Acquiring new customers
* Creating word-of-mouth advocacy
* Improving customer loyalty
Once we have a contract to do so, you would be directed to the company or outlet, and you would be given the funds you need to do the job(either purchase merchandise or require services), after which you would
write a detailed report of your experience.
Examples of details you would forward to us are:
1) How long does it take to get served.
2) Politeness of the attendant.
3) Customer service professionalism.
4) Sometimes you might be required to upset the attendant, to see how they deal with difficult clients.
Then we turn the information over to the company executives and they will carry out their own duties in improving their services.


Most companies employ our assistance when people complain about their services, or when they feel there is a need for them to improve upon their customer service.


Our company partners with you to implement proven mystery shop auditing and surveying strategies that provide critical information about customer experiences.


You will be paid a commission of $100 for every duty you carry out, and bonus on your transportation allowance.


Your task will be to evaluate and comment on customer service in a wide variety of restaurants, retail stores, casinos, shopping malls, banks and hotels in your area.


Qualities of a good Mystery Shopper:
* Is 21 years of age or older
* Loves to go shopping
* Is fair and objective
* Is ON TIME
* Is very observant and able to focus on details
* Is fairly intelligent
* Has patience
* Is detail oriented
* Is practical
* Types well
* Is trustworthy * Explains well in writing
* Is discreet * Loves to learn * Handles deadlines * Has full internet access (at home or at work)
Mystery Shopping is fun and exciting but also must be approached very seriously and is definitely not for everyone.
If you are interested in applying for consideration as a Mystery Shopper do send in your information:


Full Name:
Address: City:
State:
Zip Code:
Phone Number:
Age:
Occupation:
As soon as we receive your information we will add you to our database and we will look for locations in your area that needs to be evaluated.


Thank you,
Ed Barnes
-------------------------
Tel: (773) 661 3313
Fax: (773) 496-6789

Well, there is such a legitimate industry as mystery shopping. I used to work at a company that organized in-store demonstrations and we occasionally got in a mystery shopping project as well, which I then had to assign to a specific shopper.

However, as the poster above said, right now you need to be careful of scammers posing as legitimate companies. I would say: Investigate the company itself. Look online; find the address of the home office. Find out how long they've been in operation.

There definitely is a lot of scamming and a good deal of criminal activity at the moment due to the obvious fact that people are more urgently looking for work than in the past (more people are out of work, etc.).

Good luck! Just be careful.

2009-04-16 09:09:30 by alex g

Price: $19.75 $15.11

Personally, I think that peer-to-peer lending is an excellent idea. It increases the return for investors and reduces the rate for lenders (vs banks). It is also perfect for small loans and short-term loans, which banks don't even offer. My biggest concern is that everything has a time and place, and this is DEFINITELY not the time (for potential lenders), although hopefully the US will become the place.

Internationally, Peer-to-Peer defaults are <5%. I wouldn't be surprised if they were in the 20%-50% default rate here and now. We already know that the average US consumer spends more than they earn (incredible!). So what happens if they are able to get money on the internet and faced with a choice like this:

a) pay mortgage
b) pay car loan
c) pay for food
d) pay for gas
e) pay anonymous lender on the internet

So while 8%-20% rate of returns are tempting, I would wait until the attitudes (and debt) adjusts before getting into this in the US. What are other opinions on the subject?

I have been a lender on Prosper.com since March 2007, with about $2,400 invested. Although my projected ROI is currently about 9%, I stopped lending in October for a variety of reasons all linked to Prosper's management. Basically, the best way to summarize Prosper is that it is a wonderful concept, executed horribly due to the incompetence and arrogance of management.

There are too many serious problems with Prosper to list here, but brief review of www.prospers.org, which is the largest Prosper forums, will provide anyone interested with a long list. Here are a few:

1) The default rate on Prosper is MUCH higher than advertised. Chris Larsen, Prosper's CEO has been quoted in news articles saying the default rate is 2.7%. While perhaps technically accurate using Prosper's narrow definition of "default," this is utter balderdash from any real perspective. Prosper only counts a loan as defaulted when it sells it to a junk debt buyer for pennies on the dollar. However, Prosper currently has such sales only quarterly, so it is not uncommon for there to be many loans that are 5, 6, 7, or more months late. Historically, loans almost never come back from being even 3 months late, so all of these loans are defaults in everything but name. Moreover, Prosper calculates its official default rate as the number of defaults divided by the number of loans, but because many loans are too new to have defaulted even if the borrower never made even the first payment (which happens far more often than you might think), this also tends to understate the default rate. So far as can be seen, the real default rate appears likely to be close to 20%.

2) Another problem with Prosper’s handling of defaulted loans, is that the process completely lacks transparency. Prosper flatly refuses to disclose the identity of any of the junk debt buyers that have purchased defaulted Prosper loans, the identity of (or even the number of) any junk debt buyers that have sought or been solicited to participate in the junk debt sales, the process Prosper uses to advertise the junk debt sales to possible buyers, or the method used to calculate the sale prices of the various defaulted loans. Prosper lenders – who, after all, actually OWN the defaulted loans being sold by Prosper for pennies on the dollar – have no idea whether Prosper diligently and/or successfully obtains as high a price as possible for the defaulted loans, or simply sells them off to the first buyer it can find, regardless of price. For that matter, without transparency there is no way to be sure that Prosper doesn’t simply sell the defaulted loans at a favorable price to a company controlled by a Prosper insider. Given Prosper’s many other shortcomings, there is no good reason to believe that Prosper handles the junk debt sales in an appropriate and competent manner. Moreover, there is at least one piece of evidence that it doesn’t. Long before the last junk debt sale, a lender and forum member made a firm offer to purchase a particular loan that was headed to default. He made this offer by sending it certified mail, return receipt requested, to Prosper’s VP of collections and to its General Counsel. Prosper completely ignored this offer for almost two months, and then sent a rejection letter at the same time it sold the loan (along with others) to a junk debt buyer for considerably less than what had been offered to Prosper. This unjustified rejection by Prosper collectively cost the almost three-dozen lenders on that loan $500, which was the difference between the rejected offer and the actual sales price to the junk debt buyer Prosper chose to sell the loan to instead.

3) One of the contributing factors to issue #1, is that Prosper's collections are anemic. When a loan turns 1 month late it is turned over to Prosper's collection agency, but historically, only around 15% of loans in collections are brought current. There have been many anecdotal stories by late or defaulted borrowers on Prosper's old forums that they either were never contacted by the collection agency, or the contact consisted of an email or 2 and maybe a phone call or two. Prosper's own newly-hired VP of Collections admitted that the call logs from the collection agency showed that they were repeatedly trying to contact borrowers at the same time of day, such as between 3-5 pm, so if the borrower worked during the day, no contact was made.

4) Very little information about the borrowers is verified by Prosper. Prosper selects a subset of fully-funded listings to verify employment and income, but many listings become loans without such verification. Prosper has already had to repurchase about $400,000 of loans under its ID-theft guarantee, meaning that Prosper let many fraudulent loans through its systems. Indeed, there is one case (identified by a diligent forum member) where one person obtained a dozen loans from Prosper under different identities. After the forum member outed this on the old forum, Prosper repurchased the loans and sued the borrower in Los Angeles Superior Court to get its own money back. However, there is substantial doubt among the lending community that Prosper tries very hard to identify ID-theft loans, because when it does, it has to repurchase them from lenders.

5) Although Prosper has funded a number of fraudulent loans, it has also cancelled a number of legitimate loans, apparently through incompetence. One such loan involved the brother of a well-respected Prosper lender and very active forum participant. After claiming that faxed documents were illegible and then that Prosper couldn't open a .pdf file, it cancelled the fully-funded listing with no opportunity for the borrower to resubmit the documents. There have been many other Keystone Kops situations involving Prosper's verification.

6) Related to issue #5, Prosper's customer service is terrible. Often, they let the phone just ring and ring without answering it. When you send an email, the response is often irrelevant boilerplate. Lenders used to provide a lot of Prosper's customer service for free on their old forums.

7) Prosper's advertising is highly misleading in many ways, if not downright fraudulent. They overstate interest rates in ads directed to lenders, and understate them in ads directed to borrowers. Prosper was caught once apparently having photoshopped a screen shot of an actual listing in an advertisement about the rate (changing the actual rate to something more beneficial). Also, Prosper has repeatedly sent out mass email ads featuring borrower and lender testimonials that were quickly proven to be false. After the first time, Prosper admitted that it hadn't verified the facts claimed by the person, and said it would do so in the future. But whoops, they promptly did it again (in a different testimonial) in the next ad.

8 ) Prosper used to have a vibrant community on its official forums, with about 400,000 posts. These forums were an amazing learning experience for lenders, so that new lenders could avoid the mistakes of their predecessors. Prosper banned me from the forums and from lending (although I had already publicly announced that I had stopped lending due to Prosper's mismanagement) because I sent a bunch of PM's to new lenders alerting them to the existence of Prosper's own official forums. Then, the day before Thanksgiving, Prosper deleted its entire forum with no notice, in an effort to hide the truth from new lenders. It then replaced the old forums with a super-moderated version that is completely useless (every post must be approved before being posted, which often takes days even when the moderator lets it through).

9) When another forum member made an archive of the old forums available on www.prosperreport.com, Prosper had its lawyers send a threatening letter seeking to take the domain away on baseless trademark, unfair competition and cybersquatting grounds. Undoubtedly, Prosper figured this person would cave in and take down the site. Instead, he retained a lawyer from Public Citizen, who responded to Prosper's letter by explaining how Prosper's claims are entirely without merit. Both letters are posted on the site. Prosper has yet to respond.

(10) Prosper also misappropriated thousands of dollars of lenders' money by charging its servicing fee on loans that were more than a month late, contrary to Prosper's own legal agreements. This too was discovered by yet another forum member. Prosper admitted that its action was "in error," but only recently returned this money to lenders despite having promised to do so months ago.

(11) Another significant issue is whether Prosper will even survive as a company for the three-year term of its loans. As can be seen on www.Lendingstats.com, loan originations have been essentially flat for the last nine months, and Prosper’s CEO has admitted that loan originations need to increase 400%-500% in order for Prosper to turn a profit. Given that, clearly the outlook is troubling. Although the Prosper Lending Agreement specifies that if Prosper goes out of business the loan servicing will be taken over by another servicing company, there is no guarantee that any such company can and will be found, or that the transition will go smoothly, or that the new company won’t require higher fees in order to do the servicing.

The above issues are really just the tip of the iceberg. If anyone is considering lending on Prosper, do your due diligence. Read www.prospers.org, and check out the actual performance of lenders on www.lendingstats.com. For example, you will see that looking at ALL moderately seasoned lenders on Prosper (those with >20 loans and >6 month average loan age), the median projected ROI is around a mere 4.5%. That is close to what E-Loan is offering on its FDIC-insured, 100% liquid

2008-03-06 19:52:57 by Buy the Numbers

Price: $15.75 $10.59

When you use a laptop from free wifi hotspots, do they see what you are browsing on the internet, I mean can someobdy just steal your info ? Or it is anonymous and they dont, can someone explaing this because I made a bet with my husband because he is checking his bank account from the beach where he goes on the free wifi , and I think it is not safe because they can identify him by his computer register number, get his name and adress and then if they see the bank information they can easily steal that and use it . I heard about this on Dateline NBC .

An open wifi hotspot leaves your network traffic open to the world. Encrypted hotspots prevent this. This does permit a snooper to gather information. Having said that, the connection to your bank should be a secure ssl link. This actually does encrypt the transmission, including passwords etc. But NEVER give out personal details on an open link unless you are sure the site is secure. It should have a https:// start to the url, rather than a http:// Firewalls do NOT stop outside snooping, they only restrict attempts to break in to your machine.

2007-04-21 13:50:25 by CarolNV

ASD Cash Generator is a "profit/revenue- share" type internet advertising company that allows you to generate money by viewing websites. I'm using ASD to advertise 5 of my sites and have received real traffic and leads from it.

Each day a paid member views ads, they get a share in the profits of the company paid directly to their accounts until the member pockets 25% more than they spent. At the time of this writing, their current daily interest rate has been averaging about 0.50% - 2% per day, and is primarily based on the total the number of ad package sales for the previous day. The daily rebate rate will vary and is not fixed.

All you have to do is view 24 web sites each day for 15 seconds each to receive your daily rebate that equals to about 6 minutes.

Who's running the show?

The company was founded over a year ago by CEO, Andy Bowdoin. In doing my due diligence and searching over 9 pages of information on Google on him (all positive), I found that he has quite an extraordinary reputation, not only as a career Advertising man, but as a man of exceptional integrity.

He has over 40 years experience in sales and marketing, and has had success in everything he's done. He started his sales career working with the Dale Carnegie Courses in the early sixties and later worked with the Napoleon Hill Leadership Program. Andy has trained thousands of sales people during his career and started several companies.

He expanded a 60-minute dry cleaning franchise throughout the Southeast and Midwest. He developed a company that sold wireless communication franchises throughout the U.S. and then started a company to market credit card processing for merchants.

In 1999, Andy did research and discovered a need for GPS Tracking for fleet vehicles and GPS Tech was created. In 2006, Andy again saw a new opportunity - the need for a new way to deliver advertising to the masses and Ad Surf Daily, Inc. was born.

He modified his marketing strategies for the internet and attracted over 5,000 members in 120 days and sold over $1,200,000 in services. He now teaches his ASD members his strategies to help them build their internet businesses.

ASD has a physical office located in Quincy Florida, a state of the art online support ticketing system and real telephone support where customer service reps handle all support questions or inquiries.

One of the big perks with this program is they have an account with Bank of America where you can make direct deposits. They withstood a rigorous Verification Process (common sense will tell you Bank of America doesn't do business with scams).

* Sustainable Payout Structure, NO guarantee of earnings in a set time.
* Daily Payouts fluctuate with daily sales - true Profit Sharing, NOT a Ponzi.
* Daily sales posted each day with your exact payout percentage.
* Zero Cost Membership.
* Structured like a REAL business with CEO, Executive Officers, Chief Administrator
* Full information on CEO, not some 'anonymous' admin

How is the company revenue distributed?

The ASD Cash Generator business plan pays 50% of all daily ad buys back to the advertisers, 15% in referral commissions (on two levels) and 25% for expenses and corporate profits.

By never paying out more than they take in, ASD will never encounter the cash-flow problems that have plagued other paid-to-surf programs. You'll receive a variable percentage daily of that 50% revenue, for surfing 24 sites daily, until you reach 125% of your ad purchase (25% profit), and then you'll re-cycle.

Members in the US are sent 1099s for any net profits (not advertising purchases) earned each year from ASD, but you can write off anything you purchase in advertising packages, and in turn, save money on your taxes!

Note: ASD Cash Generator is actually the 3rd get-paid-to-surf type program Andy has created. The first two programs were discontinued last year due to programming script problems. All the previous members had their balances transferred over to the new restructured ASD Cash Generator program or were refunded. ASD Cash Generator launched in July 2007.

Speak Spanish?

ASD also has a Spanish version of the English ASD website for those wishing to either view Spanish-based websites or know people who would like to earn money surfing a Spanish site. It's set to be available for surfing and advertising in the beginning of February.

No sponsoring or recruiting is required, but for those that wish to refer others to ASD, they have a referral program that pays up to a 10% commission from the ad credits purchased that you personally refer, and up to a 5% commission from the ad credits of those referred by your direct referrals for a total of 15% total referral commission paid on 2 levels.

What's the maximum number of Ad Packages I can purchase?

Twelve thousand (12000). Ad Packages are $1.00 each, so the maximum you can own at any one time is $12,000 USD. ASD requires that you have a product, service, program or opportunity that includes a web site to advertise in order to be an advertiser.

Note: If you don't have a website to advertise, you can contact me for one to use.

3 Membership Levels: (Optional monthly subscription)

You can join ASD for FREE to advertise your site, or you can upgrade and advertise your business and earn cash-back rebates at the same time. The free membership will always be there and advertisers can get FREE advertising by viewing other web sites on the ASD Cash Generator Web Site.

An advertiser can pay a monthly membership fee and reduce cash out fees, increase referral commissions and decrease the number of sites to view on a daily basis. The amount of your monthly membership fee determines the number of times you can cash out each week, the amount of your referral commissions and the number of sites you must view each day to receive your rebates.

Monthly Memberships:

* $10 per mo. fee = Cashout on Mondays Only and 5% referral commission for 1st level and 3% on 2nd level,
* $25 per mo. fee = Cashout on Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays and 7% referral commission for 1st level and 4% on 2nd level,
* $100 per mo. fee = Exec. VIP Plan, Cashout DAILY and 10% referral commission on 1st level and 5% on 2nd level.

Special Promotion through Tuesday, January 22, 2008.

If you purchase $500 - $999 in Ad Package purchases, you'll receive 3 month Exec. VIP membership level upgrade. For $1,000- $1,999 in Ad Package purchases, you'll receive 6 months Exec. VIP membership level, and for $2000 or more in Ad Package purchases, you'll receive 1 year Exec. VIP membership level upgrade.

Do I have to pay a membership fee?

No. If you just want to be a passive member in ASD and receive cash back rebates from your ad purchases, you don't need to pay a monthly membership fee. It's primarily for people who choose to refer other advertisers or want to increase the frequency that they can withdraw their profits. If you don't pay a membership fee and you decide to refer others (optional), you'll be paid a 3% referral commission on all of your personal referrals only.

What payment processors are available?

Currently Alert Pay, Solid Trust Pay ,direct deposit into Bank of America account, cashier checks and mail in money order. Soon to come will be an International Debit card

What happens if I'm unable to view and rate websites on any given day?

If you miss a day and you're unable to view and rate ads (for any reason) you don't lose anything, it just freezes and extends the time line until you come back.

Personal opinion: From everything I've researched, Andy Bowdoin is a man of integrity who does what he says he's going to do. He has a rock-solid business plan and experience based on verifiable and publicly available information. Everything is very transparent.

His business model is a win win for everyone and very lucrative for both passive and active members. Advertisers who simply want to be sure their website get seen, get exactly what they pay for.

Entrepreneurs who want a passive way of growing their money, get the ability of doing so for simply viewing ads daily. They get quality prospects visiting their websites which will ultimately turn into sign ups, sales, or more business partners.

You can get a 25% bonus on your advertising dollars spent for simply investing 10 minutes per day to view others sites. So if you purchase $1,000 in advertising from ASD, you'll get paid daily until you receive $1,250 back. It doesn't matter if you purchase an ad for $10 or $500... if you do nothing else but view ads, the results are the same and you'll eventually earn 125% of what you spend (25% net profit).

If you look at their Alexa traffic ranking in the chart below, you'll see that there's tremendous momentum with this program right now.

Here's how to sign up:

1. Click on this link: http://www.asdcashgenerator.com/?ref=204 70, read the FAQ and Terms & Conditions, etc., then click on the link right under the top banner that says "Sign-up." To become an Upgraded (paid) advertiser, first click on Signup on the Home Page and become a Free Member.

2. When you join as a free member, you'll be sent a welcome email. Some email carriers such as AOL, Bellsouth, Yahoo and others will treat our emails as spam. Check your Spam folder to see if it ended up there. If you didn't get the email you may want to go to Google and get a free gmail account, otherwise you won't be getting any emails from ASD because they'll be blocked.

3. After you sign up, log in to your back office on the bottom left of the Home Page. Click Login and that will take you to your Account Overview Page. Look to the right of Account Level and you will see (upgrade level) in blue. Click on upgrade level and it'll take you to your Upgrade Account Page. Select your payment processor and insert the dollar amount of ad packages you want to purchase. Ad packages are $1.00 each. If you want $100 of ad packages put 100 in the window. Click upgrade. Your purchase should show up on your Account Overview Page to the right of Current Upgrade Purchase. You can pay by credit card by calling the home office at 850-627-2206.

4. Once your account is funded and you've purchased your ad packages, click on the START SURFING link on the left hand side and do your viewing each day

I am apart of this program,and I love it. WHY? because I have made 30 times what I invested. Everything they promised has happened. The only people who call this a scam,do so while advertising there scam! Anyways decide for yourself,you've done the homework. Oh,and the customer service is top of the line,I've gotten ANDY on the phone within 24 hours,personally!! Do what you want, I am not going to miss this bus,because I personally believe everyone that has this opportunity and passes will regret it one day.Oh and be sure to wait for a promotion before you enter,like a 100% match!!!
you can reach me at buss362002@yahoo.com if yiu wanna continue this Q AND A further. DONT MISS THIS BUS!

2008-06-19 23:14:30 by asdcashman