"Free gems"

[Xibor]

Those "free" gems are indeed scams in the widest sense of the word. Most want to harvest your personal data and sell it to spam companies.

No doubt that's what many of the companies do. But I don't know if I'd call it a scam when they ask for personal data and you give it to them, and then they sell it. Somewhere will be a privacy policy when they ask for your details (by law) and buried in that mess of legal words it will be spelled out.

Personally I have tried some of them and have had limited success on getting gems - but history has taught me (seeing these kinds of offers before) that I never chose the ones that require I 'sign up' to anything. If it's not just something simple like going to a page and reading an article or something, I don't go for it. Seems to have saved me a lot of grief.

[Koraku]

Sure, but you are informed and cautious. These schemes however target those that are unaware of the type of schemes, the digitally-weak and/or uniformed.
And this is exactly what scams do, target those that are unable to distinguish between a real offer and a scam. And there are still a LOT of people like that around..

[EpsilonSilver]

if these are scam offers, why is bb promoting them?

They pay BB money.

[EpsilonSilver]

Sure, but you are informed and cautious. These schemes however target those that are unaware of the type of schemes, the digitally-weak and/or uniformed.
And this is exactly what scams do, target those that are unable to distinguish between a real offer and a scam. And there are still a LOT of people like that around..

Where does this leave BB? Colluding with scammers to bilk its' player base?

[Koraku]

basically, yes.

[walkingded]

Hi,

Just thought I'd let you know that I won't be trying your offers of free gems - neither will I be buying Gems if this is how you con players.

The free gem option I tried was to read all the pages in an article that appears in a game browser window.

The one chosen was the Ginger spice one.

Unfortunately the way the page displays you cannot view all the pages, you cannot go back to a previous page and the way links for other things on the page are setup so that it's very easy to click on the wrong links.

So, no thank you - you can keep your free gems and as far as buying some - forget it.

Btw I bet the mods either delete this posting or at the very least - nothing will get done about the article.

from a very unhappy Settlers player.

Merged.

[Thejollyone]

been mentioned here

http://forum.thesettlersonline.com/t...ight=free+gems

[lordloocan]

I would still question whether it is appropriate to have links to non-pegi7 sites from a pegi7 game.

[walkingded]

Originally Posted by queen-vicious View Post
if these are scam offers, why is bb promoting them?

Exactly - why indeed?

[Urd123]

I never even tried,- because I just concluded it was same thing we had some years ago in my other game. I never got anything for free out of it- just looking trough lots of ads and getting spammed after that.
When something is free - then it is often too good to be true.