No, that YouTube survey with the free iPad is not real and you could be charged $9.99 for participating

A couple of nights ago during a late-night browsing session, I went over to youtube.com and was presented with this:

Before going forward, I should say it was a long day and I was really tired. I wasn’t thinking straight. Also, in my case, I’d swear that in the URL bar it said “youtube.com” and not what you see here.

Normally, such scammer tactics would not work on me and I’d close the window right away, but in this case it seemed legitimate (especially since the URL did say “youtube.com”). I pressed on. What’s the worst that could happen? After answering three simple questions, you are presented with this screen:

Here, greed just kicked in. I saw that they were all out of Macbook Airs and had only a few iPhones and iPads left, so I had to act fast! Somebody could be scooping up the last iPhones or iPads that YouTube was offering! Quick, let’s go with the iPad! I clicked on the iPad button and got this:

Now I must’ve been really tired because I should’ve immediately caught on that this was a scam if it required me to enter my phone number and email address. I mean, why couldn’t YouTube just use my YouTube account for this? Or maybe let me login with my gmail account? Foolishly, I entered my phone number and email address. It brought me to a page asking me for the PIN that they were about to text me on my phone. Ooh boy, here comes my free iPad!

A few seconds later, I got a text from some service called guessology.com with my PIN.

Without even thinking that this was a scam (again, I was really tired and fueled by greed), I entered the PIN. Immediately after entering my PIN, I got another text from the guessology.com “service”:

At this point I realized this must’ve been a scam since I read the text a little closer and realized there was a $9.99 per month fee. Man, did I feel like an idiot then. I just gave my email address and phone number to some scammer. I immediately texted STOP to the service and it gave me a message saying I had just unsubscribed. Good. No harm done. Hopefully.

I did some googling and found out that YES, they can and do charge you the $9.99 “service fee” even if you didn’t really consent to it. Basically, by entering the pin on the “survey” website, you are consenting to joining this fake service that just texts you bullshit. If you get as far as I did, be sure to text STOP so that they stop sending you these texts. Hopefully, at worst they will charge you $10 and you can then go to your mobile provider and try to get them to take the charges off.

I cannot believe this is legal. For at least $10 a pop, these guys must be making lots of money fooling people into entering their email address and phone number.

I did some more research and here’s some useful info on this scam:

I don’t recall what site I entered to get to this fake survey, but after some sleuthing, I found that these URLs work:

(THESE ARE FAKE)
http://youtub.com
http://youtubbe.com
http://youtubb.com
http://youtobe.com

In my case, I’d swear I went to the regular youtube.com. I have it in my history, so all I have to do is type “yout” then hit tab to complete it. I don’t know why I ended up on a fake site instead. Perhaps there was a malicious ad or something on the page that redirected me? I’ll never know for sure.

36 thoughts on “No, that YouTube survey with the free iPad is not real and you could be charged $9.99 for participating”

  3. I did the SAME EXACT THING =[ I feel like an idiot. Were you able to get your 10$ back?

  4. After going through the  process a bit I went to the bottom of a page and realized the company was in SOME COUNTRY WHICH I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW EXISTED.  I love maps, so I was surprised.  I had already given my phone number and that night I got 5! sales calls for different things.  The thing is, these are legitimate corporations letting some company in some country scam us.  I instantly put my phone number on the do not call list.  I hope it works.  Thankfully, no random sales e-mails yet.

  7. THANK YOU SO MUCH THAT OTHERS CAN LEARN FROM YOUR MISTAKES :O SERIOUSLY THIS ALMOST HAPPENED TO ME AND AHHHH- THANKS!!!

  8. I never fall for this crap, but I did it. I’m can’t beleive it.  I thought it was youtube.  I’ll let you know how it turns out.

    1. Yeah, even if you don’t normally fall for these things, it’s easy to get caught up in it when it appears that you have to act fast to get the deal.

  9. does it charge you if they didnt send you a text? i gave them my number but got no text?

    1. I think it charges you if you enter the PIN on the website after receiving it in the text, so you might be okay.

  10. Thank you sooooo much!! As it popped up, i started to google. I’m glad I didn’t go further. (Even though the prizes were tempting. . .)

  11. Just got this same exact survey, when it brought me to the page to enter in my phone #/email, it seemed fishy so I went ahead and googled it to see if it was fake. I’m glad you posted this, now I know it’s definitely a scam.

    1. Awesome. I’m so glad this helped a lot of other people. I’m tired of these companies scamming people.

  12. i was nearly towards my banking website! man what a close work. already i had some knowledge about these cyber criminals!

  15. I got fooled.. Gave away my credit card details… What shud I Do Now ????????????????? Plz help..

  17. Thanks. BTW, what happens if send them a landline number, not a cellphone number?

    1. I don’t think anything will happen in your case. You need to text them back to activate the service, so even if you gave them a cell phone number, but did not respond with a text, it wouldn’t charge. However, you should check your credit card statements just to make sure.

  21. I just got the same thing. I thought it was fishy, but had to confirm. Thanks so much for the info and pictures. Saved me time, money, and quilt lol

  22. Thank you so much, i just get this survey and then when they ask me to put my number, i do some research with this. and i found your website.. thank you so much

  23. Thank you very much! I was going to mediafire to download something and it randomly showed up! It looked so legit because it said Quezon Province which is actually a province in my country. Thank you for this post. This saved my life 🙂

  24. thanks lad for the info , i really send them some bad words , i usually spotted the scams by the way hehe

  26. Scam is still alive and well…it just happened to me tonight. Thanks for heads up.

  28. wow, this literally just happened and I thought it was scammy but they knew where I lived so I wasn’t sure. I don’t even remember going to youtube – I think it popped up through netflix? wtf..

  30. thank you so much. I can’t believe that this was 3 years ago and is still continuing on today. I am so happy that I searched this up before I placed any personal information.

Comments are closed.