I clicked on a banner that said something like Bob got his grant, have you? Like an idiot I joined what I thought was a legitimate site for finding government grants, I paid $1. When charges began showing up on my credit card I called the company and reported them as being fraudulent charges. I also called the number listed on my billing statement and it was a clearinghouse that does billing for other companies.
I was informed that I had joined grantdanger.com, which I deny, I do not nor had I ever heard of this site. They seem to use mirror sites so that when a person types information on one site it goes to another and another. This makes it nearly impossible to find the original site. One of these sites give the unfortunate person that signed up only ONE day for the free trial offer then they begin charging.
I am very skeptical about the legitimacy of these websites, even though they cover their ass with their terms of use statement, because of the way that they use or transfer personal information to other sites. By the time an individual has figured out what is going on these sites have usually charged at least 2 months to a credit card.
The amount of money that these people are making is and can be incredible. As an example if they got just 50, 000 people to sign up on only one of these websites and charge the peoples for 2 months it adds up to almost 8 million dollars. Times that by the number of sites doing this and we are talking about some very serious money that has been taken from people at a time when they can least afford it. During times such as we are experiencing the vermin come crawling out from where they have been hiding since the last time something like this was done.
I would like to see the Federal Government step in and stop these people, but I do not know if they can do anything about it. These websites are predators and parasites... I could say more but it may get me into trouble.