BlastOff Scam

After trying a couple different e-mail addresses, I finally got an invitation through the spam wall to Doo Dilly.  It seems some ISPs are still rejecting e-mails from the BlastOff Network, but at least one major free e-mail provider is letting the spam through.  Doo Dilly graciously accepted my invitation:

Now my network statistics look like this:

From which you can drill down to “My Immediate Network”:

This did not increase my BlastOff Status, which remains at 30%.  The next step is to test a sign-up from my recruiting page, any volunteers?

In the meantime, I will kick back and let my new network send me to an early retirement.  With zero work on my part, of course, which is everyone’s MLM dream.

Another famous shopping day, another e-mail with just an image:

I went to go check out the HOT HOT deals, and to see how my invitations are doing:

I guess the mad crush of people waiting for the clock to hit midnight took down the poor BlastOff Network.  Oh well, I guess I’ll go find cheaper deals elsewhere.

I received my first of what I assume will be many unsolicited e-mails from the BlastOff Network.  It was the following enticement to get me to shop through the network on Black Friday.

The e-mail contained no text, just the above image.  By itself, that is not very interesting.  The interesting part is the e-mail was sent from blastoff@jangomail.com.

That’s right, because their regular domain name and ip addresses have been repeatedly flagged as spam, they had to resort to using a 3rd party e-mail service called Jango Mail to communicate with their own members.  I can confirm that regular BlastOff Network e-mails are still having blacklist problems, as Doo Dilly has not received my invite.

Happy Blast Friday and enjoy the “massive discounts going on throughout the Blastoff Mall”!  I’ll be sleeping in.

Thanks to reader and researcher Doo Dilly, who agreed to be the guinea pig for testing a BlastOff Network e-mail invitation.  I logged into my network (which gave me a 10% BlastOff status for some reason) and saw the following options:

Option 3: Printed Invite

I did not test this, but find it quite silly that they give a prevalent option of printing invite cards.  The service is offered through VistaPrint, which may or may not give you cash back for ordering!

Option 2: Facebook Invite

Another prevalent invite option displays a popover that uses Facebook’s standard link sharer code to let you quickly annoy your social network.  Alas I did not test this either, because I don’t want to spam even my “Facebook friends”.

Option 1: E-mail Invite

My favorite part is the “exclusive” feel they give by limiting you to 250 invites.  I clicked the Manual Entry option with launched the following popover:

I sent the invite to Doo Dilly and got this summary:

My BlastOff status is now 30% complete after sending the invite.  I will wait for Doo Dilly’s response and then post the results.

UPDATE 12/01/09: The resulting network.

When signing up for the BlastOff Network, a message at the top of the screen clearly states “We will never share your information.”  A link to their privacy policy follows, which is also in the footer of every page.  A quick read of the policy shows this contradiction:

“From time to time, we make the e-mail addresses of those who access our site available to other reputable organizations whose products or services we think you might find interesting. If you do not want us to share your e-mail address with other companies or organizations, please let us know by or selecting the option which states that you do not which to have your information shared.”

Assuming they meant “do not wish” instead of “do not which”, I went to look for the option to turn off this e-mail sharing, which they had declared they would never do.  There is no check box on the sign up page, so maybe on the account settings page?  See below:

Hm, I don’t see it either.  In fact I can’t find the option to turn it off anywhere.  I guess I will sit back and wait for exciting offers from reputable organizations.  In the meantime, I’ll be enjoying my possibly negative savings.

Well, after several weeks of failed attempts, I was finally able to join the BlastOff Network.  Things should get more interesting now, as I can review features in more depth.  A summary of the process is below.

Sign up page:

The join process first asks you to confirm which network you are joining.  This is determined by a cookie that is set when you click the join button on a recruiting page of a current member.  So, for example, if you come in through the Pizza Hut network, you will be placed in the pizza giant’s MLM network and your nickels will be shared with Yum! Brands.  If you don’t visit via a Fortune 500 company or your granddaughter’s page, the network defaults to the Blastoff Network, meaning they will not have to share any revenue with your recruiter.  I confirmed I wanted to join the root level and was redirected to the…

Landing page:

My BlastOff status is 0% complete, a reminder that I should now start annoying everyone I know to try and get them to join my network.  My favorite part of this design is the basic HTML button in the top right corner prompting you to set this page as your browser’s home.  Seriously, that is the best design and placement you could come up with, CTO and gang?  A minute later the following gem hit my inbox…

Confirmation E-mail:

This was the friendly threat I received via e-mail:

Congratulations on successfully activating your Blastoff account! 

You've taken the first step toward enjoying the best of the net, saving on all of your
online purchases, sharing the experience with friends, and getting paid when they shop.

Please confirm your email address by <a href="[..snipped..]">clicking here</a>

Note: If you do not confirm your email address, your Blastoff account will be suspended.

Welcome message:

After clicking the confirm link in the e-mail, I was given this welcome to the BlastOff Network.  That’s right, I’m now going to “buckle up, kick back, and enjoy the ride!”

A textbook method of silencing questions of fraud is to drown out legitimate voices.  I detailed this phenomenon in relation to the BlastOff Network and named it the BlastOff scam scam.

Though I can’t yet prove the company itself is behind any of the scam scams, there are some interesting correlations.  For example, the number one search result for “BlastOff Scam” is currently blastoffscam.com, which is registered by Domains By Proxy.  That company, owned by GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons, offers a service to hide actual domain registration information and is sold as an add-on to GoDaddy domains.  Coincidentally, this is the exact same registration technique used for blastoffnetwork.com, the official company web site.

Why a legitimate company would need to hide it’s registration information is unknown.  I failed to find an example of another “major” internet company doing this.  What is known is that they are trying to drown out other voices.  See below for proof:

That’s right, the company is purchasing Google AdWords to capture the eyeballs of people trying to do honest research, redirecting them to standard marketing pages.  Note the Freudian slip in the title of their ad.  Also note the number of results; 220,000 is a high number of associations with the word “scam” for a recently launched service.

It appears that Pre-Paid Legal Services, BlastOff’s primary partner, is under investigation by the SEC for their business practices, causing their share price to dive.  Robert FitzPatrick at Pyramid Scheme Alert, who has previously documented a history of deception by Pre-Paid Legal Services, released a report earlier this year with details of a scheme to divert wealth from sales associates to company insiders.

Robert explains that the U.S. market for pre-paid legal services sold to individuals through a MLM network has saturated, evidenced by flat sales the last several years.  When companies stop growing, their stocks naturally decline.  However, despite the zero growth and a collapsing global economy, Pre-Paid Legal’s stock price has held surprisingly steady.

How is this possible?  An ingenious massive stock re-purchase program has masked the declining market capitalization, allowing insiders to dump their shares while propping up the stock price.  You see, they are using money from new recruits to purchase their own stock, a significant portion of which is held by the company directors.  This means there are less shares in existence, so the remaining ones will naturally have a higher value.

Without understanding that a company is valued by it’s stock price multiplied by the number of shares, it’s associates still perceive the company as being an engine for growth.  That is why people continue to be duped into joining the network.  Kudos to China for banning MLM.

Well, the SEC is finally looking into this practice and legal action will most likely follow.  Any bets on whether their own pre-paid legal services cover the cost of litigation with the government?

Michael Arrington over at TechCrunch recently generated some controversy for calling out the shady advertising techniques used by some social gaming companies.  These companies use services such as OfferPal to give their customers a means of generating in-game currency by completing surveys and accepting “free” trials of products.  While some of these offers are from reputable companies such as Netflix, many are from questionably useful services with a lot of fine print, essentially tricking gamers into much larger purchases.

While these offers are probably legal (depending on the placement of the fine print), the most dubious end up being the most profitable.  Michael coined the ecosystem “Scamville”, saying,

“The reason why I call this an ecosystem is that it’s a self-reinforcing downward cycle. Users are tricked into these lead gen scams. The games get paid, and they plow that money back into Facebook and MySpace in advertising, getting more users. Who are then monetized via lead gen scams.  That money is then plowed back into Facebook and MySpace in advertising to get more users…”

and simply,

“The games that scam the most, win.”

This is essentially the same thing that could happen with the BlastOff Network.  As they get more and more people to spam their friends, they will earn more revenue from people shopping through their platform.  Thus they will have more revenue to pay for seminars and other advertising to grow the network.  This is not necessarily illegal, but it can really drive up profits for a service of questionable value.

With similar ethical profiles, the BlastOff Network and OfferPal would make a great team.  Any predictions on when they will form a relationship?  The over-under is 6 months, by May 1, 2010.  Add your predictions to the comments below.

You know your doing something wrong when your multi-level marketing campaign annoys multi-level marketers.  Ty Tribble over at the MLM Blog posted about the amount of spam being sent out on behalf of the BlastOff Network.  Here is a quote:

“The Blastoff Network and their reps are using spam to get this particular rocket off the launch pad. Blast Off is expected to grow faster than Facebook?  The only people who expect that are the ones who are spamming.”

He also quotes someone that says each instance of this spam is subject to an $11k fine.  I don’t believe the CAN-SPAM act covers Facebook status updates (unless of course you are phishing from someone else’s accounts), but this phenomenon is causing people to temporarily and even permanently hide updates from their friends on Facebook.

In addition, BlastOff seems to be have already been flagged by enough people to be added to various e-mail blacklists.  The scrupulous team has suggested to it’s members that they use their own e-mail addresses to bypass this problem, thus causing personal e-mails to get flagged as spam.  A customer quote:

“Perhaps so, but after using the blastoff emailer, Hotmail now considers my email address as SPAM and blocks even normal mail to my hotmail contacts.”

The obvious fix to this compounded problem?

“You may have to establish an alternate email address for awhile. Yahoo allows an extra email address, as well as disposable email addresses. Gmail account is free.”

If their goal it to blacklist everyone on the Internet, they are off to a good start.

A curious thing about questionable services is that people quickly try to capitalize on the questions.  Specifically in the case of the BlastOff network, it comes as no shock that people Google for things such as “blastoff scam”.  The scary part is that people involved with the BlastOff network are trying to profit from this due diligence.  For example, when you search for “BlastOff scam”, you will find such websites as blastoffscam.com and blastoffnetwork-review.com.

You’ll notice a common theme across these sites.  The authors position themselves as independent, objective reviewers, but alas, they inevitably invite you to join their network.  You must ask yourself how they could truly be objective if they are trying to profit from the network.  I call this the BlastOff scam scam.

These people will go so far as to register key phrases at popular, human editable websites such as Squidoo, Wordpress, and Blogspot.  They will then link from these sites to their other offerings, posing as an interested 3rd party.  In some cases they will try and sell you right there.  The results at all major search engines are clogged with these bogus reviews, making it hard to get to the truth.

With this being the case, how can anyone actually research the MLM scheme, the companies behind it, and their investors?  Shady tactics indeed.

I will offer one way to help this situation: link to this site.  Google orders it’s search results by several criteria, the most important of which is the number of incoming links.  Thus, adding a link to this site will help it rank higher in search results, helping people find the truth.  You’ll note that I don’t link to the above “independent review” sites since that will only increase their visibility.

To link to this site from your blog, forum, or website, just cut and paste the following HTML:

<a href='http://blast-off-scam.com'>BlastOff Scam</a>

Fight the scam!

I found a funny diagram at BlastOff Sucka, a blog with a similar theme to this one.  I’ll let you judge the math for yourself.

There are several other posts on that blog worth a read before you get Sucka’d.  Good to see I’m not the only one annoyed that my friends are being turned into mindless marketers.

Oh, and just an update on the status of BlastOff, new registrations are still disabled four days after launch.  In fact the link from blastoffnetwork.com to the registration page is even disabled now.  Go team!

The idea of using MLM techniques for an “Internet mall” is not new.  For example, My Power Mall and even Amway / Quixtar have dabbled in the arena.  Of course, as could be expected, you will find very valid detractors of each, and a similar blog to this one about the latter: Quixtar Sucks.

The earliest and best example of the online MLM mall is the now defunct Bigsmart, which ended up being sued and shut down by the FTC.  My favorite has to be the catchily named Ei42, with this poor bloke as the visionary.  Despite the over 3000 views on YouTube, they recently ceased U.S. operations due to lack of interest.

There will always be questionable activity in the MLM space that draws interest from regulators.  There is even a website for victims to share their stories.  Moral of the story, be careful.

For BlastOff and Pre-Paid Legal Service to run around claiming this is a new idea, the next big thing, is disingenuous at best, and an illegal lie at worst.  For you to perpetuate the lie is a case of uneducated faith.

After some false starts, the join page is now finally visible, you can see the information they ask for below:

The form successfully validates your input as well.  They make sure you enter something in all the fields, at least a 2 character first and last name, etc.  However, when you click the “Launch My Site” button to submit this info, you merely get the old response “Sorry, but we are currently closed to new registrations”.

Not very user friendly.  Net result?  Two days after launch, it is still not launched.

As I’m sure you’ve noticed while browsing the web, all reputable websites have a link to a Terms of Service, usually in the footer of every page.  Since they like to compare themselves to prominent Internet companies, you can see the comparable terms of Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo.

Needless to say, Blastoff does not have terms posted on blastoffnetwork.com.  They actually have a link for it, but it just links back to the home page:

This demonstrates a lack of due diligence on the part of their legal team, which is especially scary.  There is a Terms & Conditions in regards to becoming a member the network, but nothing about the use of the website.  A major oversight.

Note that the “retailers”, “press”, and “developers” links also go nowhere.  It doesn’t help that the footers of blastoffnetwork.com and my.blastoffnetwork.com are completely different as a result of the technology hodgepodge.

Well, after a lengthy downtime, the ace “pit crew” has parts of the site running.  The parts that they didn’t program that is.

The marketing (i.e. non-functional brochure style pages) pages hosted on blastoffnetwork.com are up.  Those are running WordPress, the same free open source software that runs this blog.  The user feedback stuff is running, which is built and hosted by GetSatisfaction.

However, the parts that they did presumably build…the core functionality of Blast Off hosted at my.blastoffnetwork.com, is still down.  Trying to join the site results in a “Sorry, but we are currently closed to new registrations” error.  I’m sure this will be spun in a manner that makes their site seem exclusive, but in fact it is just getting more and more embarrassing that they can’t develop software.

It seems they like to compare their problems to big Internet companies with professional developers.  An excerpt from their blog post,

“You may encounter a few kinks at times but rest assured we are working on it. Microsoft, Google and Yahoo have never released a new product without bugs or issues of some kind.”

Based on a quick review of their technology mishmash, they have no business making such comparisons.  Google they are not.

The site is still completely down 7 hours after it was supposed to launch.  Unsurprisingly, the Blastoff twitter feed is full of grandiose statements like “we planned for a HUGE surge, but this is epic”.  While we can only speculate at the actual traffic numbers, suffice it to say they did not do their technical due diligence.

Judging from another poorly designed website’s report on the management team,  the Chief Technology Officer is Doug Gray.  From his bio, it seems to me he is more of a business / marketing / hype guy than a technical guy.  He has an MBA an no engineering degree for example.  That is not the make-up of your typical silicon valley start-up CTO, so one can hardly be surprised at the extended downtime.  In fact, one should be surprised if this thing ever runs.

As could be expected, at just around launch time for the new Blast Off Network, Twitter and Facebook are abuzz with people trying to claim the top levels of the MLM scheme.  View the twitter trend at Trendistic or just do a twitter search to see all the people annoying their contact lists.  Here is the similar Facebook search.

As could also be expected, the traffic has brought down the nascent service.  All requests are currently being met with the standard php “Error establishing a database connection”.

I must say, the marketing engine behind this venture is amazing.  To get that many people to annoy their friends and relatives with links to a downed quasi-service is nothing short of remarkable.  Hats off to them.

Simple answer: to be determined.

For a little background, see What is the BlastOff Network and it’s relationship with Pre Paid Legal Services.

Is the network legal?  Sure, on paper.  It only becomes illegal in a true Pyramid Scheme.  Assuming we can trust this company (hence the “to be determined”), then yes, you can make money, especially if you are lucky enough to be at the top of the pyramid.

What’s the catch?  Well, for starters, as with any multi-level marketing (MLM) network, you have to annoy everyone you know and insist they get involved before you make any significant income.  Is this a big deal?  Depends on your situation.  For someone with a popular blog, for example, it may take only a blog post to entice thousands of people to join their network.  For others, it might involve secretly changing their grandmother’s home page in the hopes she won’t know the difference.

Another problem with MLM networks is that even though the company behind the structure might be on the straight and narrow, it’s quite possible some shady sales tactics are used by less-than-reputable members of the network.  They might, for example, declare that you have to pay for pre paid legal services to join the BlastOff Network.  This is not true, but is a great way to increase their income.  Does that make the whole network a scam?  No.

Will this network take off?  Only time will tell.  However, they sure are trying to get traction.  In fact, thousands of people are being told about the network on a daily basis across the country in seminars sponsored by Pre Paid Legal.

In addition, the Internet marketers are jumping all over it.  If you do a google search for “BlastOff Network”, you will see that people have already reserved many related domain names and are purchasing Google AdWords ads to try to get you into their networks.  If this many people believe in it before it has even launched (scheduled for today, Oct 22, 2009), there is a reasonable chance that many grandmas will have the BlastOff Network as their home page without their knowledge.

Watch this space for ongoing developments in the “BlastOff Network scam”, if that is indeed what it turns out to be.  We will be analyzing the relationship with Pre Paid Legal Services, and keeping a close eye on their profit numbers and investors.

Pre-Paid Legal Services, Inc is a public company that sells legal services for a monthly fee.  Think of it like insurance for legal fees.  You pay a monthly premium to avoid potentially sizeable legal bills when buying a house, creating a will, or arbitrating with a car insurance company.  The company has been in business for decades and trades under the stock ticker PPD.

What does this have to do with the BlastOff Network?  Well, on the surface, they are simply a service that is being advertised on the BlastOff Network (see What Is the BlastOff Network).  That means you can get paid if people in your BlastOff Network purchase the pre-paid legal services.

However, a closer look reveals that they are a bit more integrated into this particular MLM scheme.  You see, if you happen to buy that service, the revenue you receive from other purchases in your network can increase.  Normally, BlastOff credits you for purchases made in the first 10 levels below you in the multi-level network.  If you are a Pre-Paid Legal customer, that number increases to 20.

This is a very clever way to integrate a service into an MLM network, as both parties benefit from this relationship.  You see, the more folks in the BlastOff Network, the more eyeballs will see the offer for pre-paid legal services.  On the flip side, Pre-Paid Legal Services is advertising the BlastOff Network to all it’s associates.  Fans of MLM will have a much greater incentive to purchase possibly unnecessary legal insurance because they can double the depth of their network.  Fans of legal insurance (there must be some, they sold $464 million worth last year) have a way to recoup some of their losses, and possibly make a profit by referring friends and family to their shopping network.

In fact, Pre-Paid Legal Services is so excited about this extra marketing that they are holding seminars across the country to get people excited about the soon to launch BlastOff Network.  I can confirm there were hundreds of people at a seminar in Salt Lake City last night (Oct 21, 2009), which is a fair distance from the Pre-Paid Legal headquarters in Ada, Oklahoma.

If the campaign is successful, the legal insurance company may squeeze a few more dollars out of the saturated market.  Only time will tell, watch this space.

UPDATE 11/03/09 – PPL needs their own services.

The BlastOff Network is simply a customizable start page, or personal web portal akin to My Yahoo, iGoogle, or NetVibes.  Basically it’s one of those web pages that you can customize with the content you want to see every day.  What’s the big deal then?  Well, simply put: money.

You see, the primary means of making money on the internet is via advertising.  Websites create revenue by driving eyeballs to places where people spend money.  If you use a personal start page, the company that serves it up has the best chance of directing that spend, or more to the point, getting paid for referring you.  For example, Yahoo! gets paid when you click on one of their banner ads, or for simply showing it to you depending on the arrangement with the particular advertiser.  This is the primary source of revenue for them, which was $1.575 billion in the latest quarter (3Q 2009).

As you can see, it is a big business.  Thus companies will fight tooth and nail to get your eyeballs onto their sites.  Google hopes you start with a search using their engine.  Microsoft hopes you use their web portal (live.com) or their new Bing search engine.  The BlastOff Network is just the latest player.

Some companies even resort to somewhat questionable tactics to grab your attention.  For example, internet service providers such as Qwest will change the default home page of your browser when you install their unnecessary modem software.  Because few people know how to (or bother to) change their home page, usually found in the Options menu of a browser, this will be the screen they see every time they launch their browser to surf the internet.  Thus, the internet service provider will get the first crack at showing ads from it’s sponsors.

The BlastOff Network wants to be your home page.  They want you to start all your shopping with them.  By leveraging affiliate relationships, they receive a percentage of all purchases made when you “blast off” from your home page.  The enticement?  They will share part of this revenue with you.  Oh, and they will also throw in a smaller percentage of all the revenue from purchases made from the home pages of your family and friends, in true multi-level-marketing fashion.  That’s right, they want to be your grandma’s home page as well.

The multi-level-marketing angle is the new twist.  They are essentially combining the proven techniques of MLM campaigns with the not-so-well understood Internet advertising business.  They hope that you get all your friends and relatives to use their home page, increasing both your revenue and their profit.

The BlastOff Network is scheduled to launch today, Oct 22 2009, with Pre Paid Legal Services as it’s primary advertiser.