Bloggers Beware!

 

Bloggers

 

Recently I was contacted by several companies that wanted to advertise on the blog. These companies went on to say how much they would pay me and exactly what they needed for advertising. Now I am just like everybody else when there’s a chance to make money and it fits with my blog, sure I’m open to suggestions. But as we exchanged emails back and forth, things started to get really weird. It seems like companies from foreign countries have this new policy, what is that policy you ask?

Basically, the policy is that before they pay a blogger, they have to verify their identity. Of course, I didn’t say anything about it to begin with as most payments are made through PayPal. And my identity is verified through PayPal. However for these two particular companies  that wanted to work with me, that was not enough.

They wanted me to send a copy of either my driver’s license or my passport to verify my identity. I started questioning why they needed that as PayPal  should have been enough. So  I thought, okay let me try something so I made a copy of my driver’s license blacking out all the information except for my name. Thinking  that would be enough to verify my identity.

bloggers beware license

But unfortunately, I got an email from the company stating  they needed the full information. Now I don’t know about you, but I am NOT going to send that kind of information out to anybody. And in  this day and age of identity theft, my identity, and my reputation is  too important to me to give that kind of information out.

[Tweet “Reputation and  Identity are important. Protect them. #bloggersbeware”]

I politely responded that I would have to pass and  that I was  forwarding the email to our attorney general. As it is  illegal for companies to ask an information such as that.

[Tweet “No matter the amount of $, never send copy of your id to companies #identitytheft”]

No matter what  the amount of money, is offered, never ever give that kind of information out. I am writing this post so that other bloggers and marketing people would be aware of this company and others like it.

The two companies that approach me  were  dress companies. And I’m writing their name in this article so the other bloggers won’t fall for this game. These are Dresswe and TBDress.

Here’s a copy  of part of an email stating their new policy. But never once did I get an official copy. I was just supposed to take their word for it.

bloggers beware screenshot

So tell me have you ever faced something like that and your life and if so how did you deal  with it.  and put the company’s name below so that we all will be aware of their policies and know which companies to work with and wish to just say no thank you.

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3 Comments

  1. I had an experience where a brand new compnany was contacting bloggers the LINKED up to parties! The blog they ran used Admin as the author of thir only post which was an ad to their services. None of the pages listed were even filled out even their contact form was empty. Their facebook page was empty also. It turns out they were known for using the blogger as a testimonial for their company but giving out the url as theirs. Shortly after I wrote them a nasty note on Facebook I learned my blog was being used to contact other unknowing bloggers. I wrote an article called. Are you a victim? are you sure about that?
    What some people won’t do. They had all my public info which was enough to ruin my reputation as a legitimate blogger.

  2. You made the right decision 🙂 those Chinese clothing sites are always doing something wrong, however I wonder if their asking for ID is illegal in China also or wherever they are based.

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