FREE GAIA CASH: A Guide to Getting Rich and Staying Safe

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SO YOU WANT FREE GAIA CASH?

Great, so does everyone else! The purpose of this thread is to help you both stay safe and actually get free cash. If you do it right, you should be able to amass quite a bit of Gaia Cash and all you'll have to spend is some time. But in order for this to work, you need to both stay safe and understand the process of the companies that are in charge of granting the free moolah. This thread is for suggesting safety procedures, and clarifying how to deal with those companies.

The purpose of this thread is not to tell you whether specific offers are safe or not. I'll mention a couple of individual offers that people seem to frequently complete, and their risks, but I won't be yay/naying every "Do you like dogs?!?" survey.

For those of you who are impatient, a list of posts:

Post 1: Introduction and List of Links

Post 2: Quick Start - A 13 step guide to actually receiving free GC, and staying safe while doing so.

Post 3: Before You Click It - Things to consider to stay safe before you look at any offers.

Post 4: Scams, Ripoffs, Identity Theft, and You - A list of the common types of offers, and the risks associated with each. The rule of thumb: When in doubt, don't do it. If it seems too good to be true, it is.

Post 5: Final Steps? Not Really. - The process of actually getting Gaia Cash, once you've completed an offer. It's not as simple as you'd hope.

Post 6: Faking It: The Pros and Cons of Giving Real Information - Real information could get you on spam mail lists, get you serious phone charges, or worse, give your identity to a crook. But fake information could get you banned. A look at the options when it comes to giving away your personal information.

Post 7: Troubleshooting and Other Things to Know - Addressing the questions that come up when things aren't working. I suggest you read this BEFORE you complete any offers, so you'll know what to expect. Forewarned is forearmed.

Post 8: Links and Other Goodies - Useful sites with additional information or that might help in the event of difficulty receiving your GC.

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Gaia Cash Quick Start

This is for the people who are lazy, and don't want to read the rest of the thread. For a quick primer on using free Gaia Cash offers safely, start here. The rest of the thread will explain why I say some of these things and give you additional tips, but this will get you off on the right foot and shouldn't give you any viruses.

1. Update your computer's virus protection. This is mandatory. If your computer doesn't have virus protection, go to the AVG website and download their free version; it's as good as any virus blocker on the market. Even if you're not going to complete any GC offers, this is a good step; it's not safe to be on the internet without some sort of virus protection.

2. Use Mozilla Firefox as your default browser, and use the 'Ad block', 'Flash block', and 'Web of Trust' add-ons to that browser. This is not mandatory, but it will keep you out of the way of many of the common viruses, which target Internet Explorer as the most commonly used browser and are delivered via ads or flash plugins.

3. Make a spam email. This should be an account on a free service like Yahoo or Google, and (very important) shouldn't use the same name/password as your Gaia account or any other online account that is important to you. Create a new name and password for the spam account so that if it somehow gets stolen, they can't crack anything else of yours online.

4. Make a mule account on Gaia. For fun, tell Gaia that you were referred by your main account, and the main will get gold for referring a 'friend'. Use the spam email account as the email for the mule, but use a different username/password from the spam account.

5. Go to the National Do Not Call List and register your cell phone and home phone numbers.

Have you done all that? Then you're ready to start completing offers.

6. Choose an offer. Things to think about while doing so? The following are bad:

THESE ARE BAD

- Offers that require you to give information like your social security number. NEVER complete these, they're a vehicle for identity theft and are almost certainly scams.
- Offers that require a credit check. NEVER complete these, they're a vehicle for identity theft, and any credit cards or loans you obtain will almost certainly have exploitative rates. They are almost certainly scams.
- Offers that ask for a credit card number. Chances are overwhelmingly good that these are scams.
- Offers that ask for your cell phone number. Chances are good that these are scams, and they may be hard/impossible to cancel before they charge your phone bill. Think of these as virusware for your cell phone, and don't touch them.
- Offers that require you to download anything (mouse pointers, toolbars, icons, anything at all). These are almost certainly scams and will put ads or viruses on your computer.
- Offers that require you to pay money before receiving GC. These may be hard to cancel before they charge your credit card bill, and may well be scams. Any goods you receive will probably be low quality and not worth the money you pay. You're better off buying a Gaia Cash card at the drugstore.

Got that? Basically, the only safe-ish offers are the free poll or survey ones, that have names like "Which do you prefer: Coke or Pepsi?" Granted, some of the companies giving other kinds of offers are legit, but telling the good offers from the bad can be difficult, and can wreck your wallet or your credit record in the process. Hence I recommend steering clear of anything other than polls/surveys.

7. Read the fine print. This is an absolute must. Now that you've chosen an offer, read the fine print on the first page, and decide if you're okay with the terms. Next, click on the 'Privacy Policy' and 'Terms and Conditions' links contained in the fine print. Many offers have fine print that says something similar to 'User agrees that advertising partners of X firm may use submitted information to contact them with offers, regardless of whether user participates in Do Not Call restriction lists'.

8. Skip every part of the survey that you possibly can. Do not give them anything above the bare minimum of information.

9. Take a screenshot when you get to the last page of the offer (it should say something like 'Last Step!' or 'Final Offers!'). This will be necessary later, when you submit a report.

10. Close the offer page and wait. If it's your first time completing an offer, you may actually be awarded GC at this time. If you've completed offers before, you probably won't receive cash, so wait fifteen or twenty minutes for the 'Contact Support' link to show up next to the offer on your 'Offer status' page.

11. Submit a report ticket. On the report, check 'Did not receive any points', and in the response box, say something like "I can't copy a confirmation email because it was a survey, so there was no confirmation email sent to me. I completed many pages of surveys and offers, though, and got to the final steps page. Here's a screenshot: [Post screenshot here. If you don't have a screenshot, try to describe what the last page looked like; i.e. that it had your name and address in red, what reward the offer promised exactly, how many bronze offers you would have needed to complete to get the promised gift, etc]." If you don't see an option to click for not receiving points, then fill out the comment form that you do see, and put something similar to the above, including screenshot, in the box for questions.

12. Wait. It may take several days or even over a week for the offer company to get to your ticket, but eventually they will and you should get an email saying 'We reviewed your feedback, and have awarded you points for completing XYZ offers'.

13. Repeat this process. Do not submit too many reports at the same time, as these companies have a tendency to claim they've credited you for multiple completed offers, then only actually credit you for one. So submit your report tickets one at a time to make sure that you get credit for all the offers you complete.

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Before You Click It


Before you click on any offers, it makes sense to arm your computer and yourself against dangers that you might encounter. Doing so will keep your computer, and your personal information, safer. These are my suggestions for ways to protect your machine. It's not meant to be an exhaustive list, but it's a good common-sense start.


Virus Protection - If you don't have it, get some. If you have it, update it.
Nothing could be more crucial than a good virus protection program, not just when clicking on GC offers, but when browsing the internet in general. Companies like Norton, Symantec, McAfee, or AVG are well-known and reliable providers of virus protection software. You should have one of these installed, and make sure your virus definitions are up-to-date before clicking on any offers. It's not a bad idea to scan your machine at the end of the day after you click on GC offers, as well, just to be safe and n** any problems in the bud.

If you don't have any virus protection currently, AVG offers a free option that's a good basic provider. It doesn't have any bells and whistles, but it will protect your computer as well as any of the ones you pay for. Here's a link to the AVG website if you want to look into it.


Be aware of your browser.
When it comes to viruses and adware, not all browsers are created equal. Internet Explorer is the most common browser out there, so many viruses and malware programs are written specifically to target it. So if you want to make yourself a little safer, think about using a browser that's not IE. I like Mozilla Firefox, because it lets you install add-ons to make the browser even safer.

If you'd like to look into Firefox, here's a link to their website. If you install it, I recommend that you then add three widgets to the browser to help you stay safe:
- Adblock Plus - This add-on keeps ads from appearing on your browser. It not only speeds up the time it takes to load pages, in the case of questionable sites like those on many GC offers, it can keep you from downloading images that might carry viruses or malware. It's also good against most pop-ups.
- Flashblock - Like Adblock Plus, this keeps your computer from downloading flash files that might carry viruses or malware with them. Because it blocks all flash, it will also block things like Youtube videos or Gaia's Aquarium features, but all you need to do is click the little 'play' icon to load flash files that you trust. It barely takes any effort at all to see the flash that you do trust, and it keeps your computer much safer by excluding flash that you don't trust.
- Web of Trust - Web of Trust rates websites for how safe they are, and will warn you about sites that are dangerous. Because of this, it will warn you about most if not all the offer websites. You can choose to ignore the warning, and if you want GC you sometimes must, but having this add-on active will remind you of what sites require extra protection.

If you're using Internet Explorer, there are no equivalents to these three add-ons, so you're a little out-of-luck. Just remember to be careful, and set your browser's security settings to at least 'medium'. If you're a slightly more advanced user, configure the security not to accept cookies, and not to automatically download questionable file extensions.


Use an email account that you don't care about.

There are many reasons not to use your primary email: you'll get a lot of spam from filling out offers, it may keep you a little safer if you accidentally get infected with malware, and it keeps advertisers from being able to guess anything about you based on the email profile. Use a free service like Yahoo or Gmail, and fill out the email address profile with fake information (Name? John Doe. Address? 123 Nowhere Lane). Do not use a password on this email that is the same as your Gaia password, or the password to any other account that you care about online. Make up a new password for this one. This will keep you safer if you accidentally run into an offer that tries to harvest your email password.


Use a Gaia account you don't care about.

Although it's probably not strictly necessary, I would advise you to use a mule account for filling out GC offers, not your main. Your Gaia account ID is transmitted to the company managing the offers so that they'll know where to send the GC, which means that it goes on a list and is among the information that could potentially be sent to advertisers, along with the name, address, phone number, email, etc that you fill out in the 'registration' portions of the offers. While it's possible that this poses no risk to you, I would always advise you to err on the side of being overly-cautious when dealing with these people, which means completing your offers on a mule. Once you buy items with your GC on the mule, you can always trade them to your main. Better safe than sorry in my opinion, especially when it comes to information about your accounts.

The mule should have a different password and different user information from your main, and shouldn't have anything in the name that could identify you (don't name it Jane123 if your main's account name is Jane, or if your real life name is Jane).


Register for the Do Not Call list, and protect your phone.

Before signing up for any offers, register every phone you own with the national Do Not Call list. Here's a link. It only takes about two minutes, and is well worth the effort. Some of the offers have sneaky Terms of Service that try to circumvent this list, but many don't, so signing up for the list may save you some grief from telemarketers.

Additionally, there may be other things you can do to protect your phone. Some phone companies offer free options by which you can block all texts to your phone unless you specifically agree to accept the text. If your company is one of them, sign up for this option. They won't charge you for the text if you don't accept it, so if an unscrupulous advertiser gets your number and tries to send you ads by text, this may protect you from some unexpected charges.


Be aware of what service is providing your offers, and what the terms of that service are.

There are two services that provide offers to Gaians: OfferPal and GetGambit. Each has its own rules and quirks. I recommend reading the 'Troubleshooting and Other Things to Know' post on this topic BEFORE completing any offers, so that you'll be aware of any bumps in the process and know what to expect from your service.

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Scams, Ripoffs, Identity Theft, and You
What kind of offers you'll see, and what to expect from them.


Surveys and Polls
These ask you to give your address, phone number, name, and email, then require you to navigate through between 20 and 40 pages of offers before reaching a 'Last Steps' screen, whereupon you will in theory receive GC. In theory.

In reality, these are the safest offers, especially if you've taken the precautions I mention in the 'Before You Click It' section. They'll take time, but the risk that they'll install something dangerous on your computer is relatively small, and the worst they can do is send you spam. You can say no or skip every offer in them, and if they require that you say yes, you can either say no or skip the offer screen they take you to afterward, so there's no money required. Once you see the 'Complete a bronze offer' screen, stop. You're done. You don't have to do the bronze offers or go any further to receive GC. Always take a screenshot when you reach the 'Last Steps' or 'Bronze offers' screen; you'll probably need it later to actually get your GC (see the section on 'Actually Getting Your Cash' to see why). These are the offers that I recommend you do, and they should be safe if you're careful.


Mobile Phone Offers
These require you to give a working mobile phone number. The advertiser will text you a PIN number and you'll have to input the PIN on your computer, then you get GC. In theory.

In reality, these are a scam that can cost you a lot of money. Read the fine print very very carefully. Many of these charge you for signing up for the service as soon as you put in the PIN number, which means you'll get a charge on your bill even if you cancel immediately. With these companies, in order to get GC, you have to let them charge you $10 or so, which you 'agree' to by putting in the PIN. It doesn't matter how quickly you tell them to stop, you will pay money. But it gets worse. In order to cancel the monthly charge that signing up for these will add to your phone bill, you usually have to text STOP or a specific number to the company running the ad. Often even doing this won't halt the charges, and you will find them recurring on your cell bill, even when you think you've canceled them. Sometimes, instead of texting, you may have to call the company to get the charges to stop, but when you try you'll find that no one at the company picks up the phone, so you can't cancel. These have the potential to cost you a lot of money, so I don't recommend that you do them. They can be made a little safer if your cell phone company lets you yay/nay any third-party service charges that show up on your bill, but even then they can be expensive.


Software Download Offers
These require you to download a toolbar, game, pointer set, or some other small file. Once you complete the download (sometimes you're required to install the file as well), you get GC. In theory.

In reality, these are a great way to get your computer infected with viruses, adware, malware, trackers, and more. At best, they'll cause lots of pop-ups and other ads to appear. At worst, they'll track every keystroke you make and send your credit card information and passwords to a thief. Some of these programs track every website you visit, and send that information to advertisers to spam you. Some of them have the potential to fry your hard drive. I do not recommend that you do these at all, ever. There's far too much risk involved, and the worst case scenarios involve losing your credit card or social security information, or losing your hard drive to a virus. It's not worth the risk for a little bit of GC.


Product Offers
These require you to sign up for a free product trial, a monthly product club, buy a product, or try a product. After you sign up for, or buy the item, and give the company a valid credit card number, you get GC. In theory.

In reality, the risk associated with these offers depends strongly on the company offering the product. One of the most popular offers of this type is for a free Netflix trial, which gives you GC as soon as you sign up and can be canceled at any time (even right after you sign up) with no penalty. Since Netflix is a reliable company, this offer is relatively safe. Other companies are dangerous. The so-called free trials or monthly clubs may turn out to be impossible to cancel, and the products that you think aren't expensive may come with steep shipping charges, even in the hundreds of dollars. This includes the Bella Sole jewelry offer, which will charge you $68 a month after the first shipment and may be very difficult to cancel before you get charged. Use extreme caution when signing up for any of these, and read every bit of fine print. Giving your credit information to most companies is not safe, and you should err on the side of caution in any of these cases.

I recommend that if you're going to sign up for these, check to see if your bank or credit card company offers a SafeShop option. These create a temporary credit card number that is tied to your actual card, and the temporary card may carry a spending limit that you can set. These are a good way to keep your information safe and minimize your risk. I use Bank of America online, and I know that they offer this for their credit cards. I'm fairly sure other major banks do too. Anything you can do to keep your card number out of their hands it a good thing.


Credit Offers
These offers require you to apply for a credit card or loan, or otherwise give a company your personal information for a credit check. Upon approval for the card/loan or signing up for the credit check, you get GC. In theory.

In reality, there is NO reason to EVER sign up for these offers. They are universally scams. Oh, the credit card you get may be real enough, but the terms of the card will be outrageous, even for the credit industry. The loans advertised this way have interest that could probably considered criminal in states with predatory lending statutes. (Ever wonder why the ToS on offers like this will include a statement like 'Any complaints will be litigated in XYZ state, under the laws thereof'? It's because that state won't shut them down for being a predatory lender. Now you know.) The credit check companies are taking your money and your personal information to do something that you can do yourself three times a year for free, on the government's legitimate website. You're giving them money and valuable information for something you can do in less time than it takes to fill out their offer. In short, I do not recommend that you EVER complete these offers. Giving this sort of information away is risking your credit history, and in the worst cases you could be a victim of identity theft. No amount of GC is worth that. Run the other way from any site asking for credit information or requiring credit checks.

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Final Steps? Not Really.


So you've finally skipped through the pages after pages of offers, and you see a screen that says 'Final Steps!' or 'Last Step!' Take a screenshot of it. Great, you think, I'm finished so now I should get my GC. Not so fast.

Typically, I've found, the first offer you complete should credit automatically. After that, very few or none of them do. If it's been a few hours after you finished an offer that "Typically gives Gaia Cash in minutes!" or says to 'Allow 15 minutes for payout', here's what you should do. Be prepared to be persistent on this.

1. Find the link that reads 'Offer status' or 'Missing cash'. Click it. You should see a list of offers you've started. Those that have paid should read 'Completed'. Those that haven't should read 'Started' or 'Processing' or something like that. What it says exactly will depend on which service provider you're seeing. There are two, GetGambit and OfferPal, and which one you see seems to be randomly distributed across accounts.

2. Find the customer service form and open it. If you're seeing an OfferPal page, each offer you completed that hasn't paid should eventually have a 'Contact Service' link beside it, so click that. If you're seeing a GetGambit page, there should be a question mark icon beside offers that haven't paid. Click that.

3. Fill out the customer service form. Give your name and address if it asks for that, and use an email that you actually check (this is important; the company will try to contact you via this email). Ideally this should be the same one that you used to fill out the offer, but I've found that with OfferPal at least you can use a different email from the one you used on the offer and they will still credit you. GetGambit doesn't seem to be so forgiving. In the box at the bottom where it tells you to post your customer service question or confirmation email, tell them that you didn't receive any points, briefly describe the process of completing the offer, and give the link to the screenshot of the 'Final Steps' page. (This is why I told you to take one.)

4. Submit the form and wait. Customer service requests can take up to a week for them to respond. If you're lucky, they will credit you. I've found that OfferPal is generally good about this. If you're not lucky, they'll give you some excuse like 'Your IP has already completed this offer', and won't credit you. You can try to argue about this, but there's really not much you can do in this case.

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Faking It: The Pros and Cons of Giving Fake Information



Since for the most part, these advertisers have no way of verifying the information that you give them (Unless you're giving credit info; they can verify that. But why are you giving credit info to these hucksters? Bad idea), you may be tempted to give fake information. I actually don't advise against this, but before you fill out that form in the name of Darth Vader or Lisa Simpson, read on.

Pros:
- Fake information prevents advertisers from contacting you.
- Fake email addresses prevent your real ones from getting spam.
- Fake information may make you feel more secure, and will probably make your parents happier.

Cons:
- Fake information could get you banned from the GC service. If you use Darth Vader or Lisa Simpson as your name, the customer service rep will recognize that you're faking and might ban you. As far as I can tell, faking it will not get your actual Gaia account banned, it will only get your Gaia account banned from using GetGambit or OfferPal. Still, a ban means no more free GC for you. There doesn't seem to be any reliable information on how often they actually ban people, so there's no way of assessing the actual risk that this will occur.
- Fake information makes these services less likely to credit anyone in the future. Every time you fake it, you decrease the chance that the service will help you (or anyone) the next time you submit a claim for not being paid. Faking it costs them money, and they'll take it out on all of us.
- Gaia discourages giving fake information. Strongly. Too many people giving fake information could result in the free cash no longer being available. Yes, 'too many people' includes you; you are not a special snowflake.

Those are the major arguments, and there are good ones both for and against. Anecdotally from other users, providing actual information on phone numbers and addresses doesn't noticeably increase calls or mail if you're only doing the surveys and polls, especially if you register with the Do Not Call list. So weigh your options carefully. Given that there's a chance you'll be banned from more free GC, faking basic things like name and address may not be worth the risk.

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Troubleshooting and Other Things To Know


Q: You said that some things about whether I'll get GC depend on what offer service my account is on. How do I find this out?

A: Hover your mouse pointer over the 'Offer status' link. If you're on GetGambit, the address that appears in the address preview bar at the bottom of your browser should say 'getgambit.com', followed by some other stuff. If you're on OfferPal, it will say 'offerpal.com' followed by other stuff. If you're still not sure, right-click on the 'Offer status' link and click on 'Properties'. This will bring up a little box in your browser that has the address for the link in it, among other things, and the address should have one of the two service names in it.

Q: I completed lots of surveys, but only got credit for one, even after I submitted a report! No fair! What's going on?

A: It depends on what service your account is on. If you're on GetGambit, then you should be aware of their rule: you only get credit for one offer PER ADVERTISER. So if an advertiser has a bunch of offers up and you complete more than one of them, you'll only get credit for the first one. If you're on OfferPal, it seems to be possible to get credit for more than one survey from the same advertiser, but there's a different catch: they tend to 'forget' to credit your account, even after they email you to say they've granted you credit for an offer. To avoid this, I advise that you only submit one or two feedback requests to OfferPal at a time. It may take longer to get credit that way, but this will maximize the amount of credit that they actually award.

Q: Darn GetGambit and their stupid 'one per advertiser' rule! How do I tell what advertiser a given offer is from?

A: Click on the offer, and remember the 'top and bottom' rule: to tell what advertiser you're dealing with, look at the top of the page and the bottom. At the top of your browser is the address bar. Note what address is showing; it should say something like "http://ThisIsTheAdvertiserName.com". Don't stop there, though. Next, scroll all the way down and look at the very bottom of the page. You should see a copyright notice, that will say something like "Copyright © 2009 ThisIsTheAdvertiserName.com, a MarketLabs.net, Inc. website." In this case, MarketLabs.Net, Inc. might also be considered the advertiser for this site, since it's the parent company. So if you were to finish this offer, it would be useless to complete any more offers from ThisIsTheAdvertiserName OR MarketLabs. I recommend that people on GetGambit keep a list of what advertisers they've finished offers from, so that they don't waste time.

Q: I submitted a report, and still haven't gotten results. I know that I didn't do any previous offers from that advertiser, so what else can I do to make them give up the cash?

A: Unfortunately, not much. You can try submitting the report again, but that still may not work. You can try calling the company, but I've heard mixed results about whether anyone will actually pick up, and whether they'll be able to help if you're lucky enough to get someone who does pick up. So you may just be up a creek. Sorry. You can try contacting a Gaia admin, but they have no control over these companies, so the chances that they'll be able to help are slim.

More questions can be added here if they come up frequently in the thread.

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Links and Other Goodies


A list of helpful links:

- The Official Gaia FAQ on Free Cash Offers - If you get a virus or malware from an offer, this thread tells you how to report it.

- GetGambit's Official FAQ

- GetGambit's Company Blog - It's interesting reading, but it makes them sound a lot less sketchy than they actually are.

- OfferPal's Official FAQ

- OfferPal's Official Company Blog

- Some Information on Free GC Offers - A thread giving the Better Business Bureau ratings of many advertisers. Hint: they're generally not good.

- A thread about what sort of viruses you can get from download offers

- The Better Business Bureau - Feeling ripped off? Submit a complaint of your own.

- The FTC - What the Federal Trade Commission has to say about credit reports and fake report companies, including a link to the legitimate way to get a free report. Instead of paying for one of the scam offers, use this if you're curious.

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Reserved.

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Reserved.

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Reserved.

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And we're open!

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Opening day of hockey season. Life is good.

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