Is uTest and Payoneer a Scam?

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Is uTest and Payoneer a Scam?

Monday, February 11, 2008 4:58 AM | Humor

TechCrunch posted a news item on 2/10/2008 about a new "get paid for beta testing service called uTest. This has all the makings of a farce and a potential for identity theft. In addition to get paid for testing you must sign up with Payoneer and receive a MasterCard debit card.

I myself was nearly duped. I have tested software for nearly 15 years with many companies and enjoy providing feedback to help them make better software products. I figured it might be a way to make some easy, fast cash.

I did register for uTest and afterwards was notified of upcoming betas: 888.com, incredimail and other similar software (known spyware ridden software).

Anyway as I was registering for Payoneer, they wanted quite a bit of personal information including my birthday and social security number. I stopped and performed a whois lookup on Payoneer. It seems that while the website is registered to the US address the name servers and website hosting for payoneer.com reside in Israel.

Registrant:
yuta inc
   2600 netherland Ave
   suite 3104
   Bronx, NY 10463

      Tal, Yuval        yuval@payoneer.com
      Payoneer Inc.
      1841 Broadway
      Ste 520
      New York, NY 10023
      US
      917 454 9601 fax: 1800-251-2521

   Record expires on 23-Apr-2008.
   Record created on 23-Apr-2005.
   Database last updated on 11-Feb-2008 04:49:01 EST.

   Domain servers in listed order:

   DNS.NETVISION.NET.IL      (Israel)
   NYPOP.ELRON.NET

---------------------------------------------

Registrant:
   uTest Inc
   31 Lakeside Drive
   Ashland, MA 01721
   US

   Domain Name: UTEST.COM

   Administrative Contact, Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
      uTest Inc
      Doron Reuveni
      31 Lakeside Drive
      Ashland, MA 01721
      US
      (617)417-0593
      roy@utest.com

website: payoneer.com - 199.203.243.96 - the web site is hosted in Israel as well.

Kind of scary to think that uTest and Payoneer could be nothing more than a ruse to trick unsuspecting consumers into divulging personal information to be used for identity theft.

While I am not saying that uTest and Payoneer are scams. It does make one wonder about it.

If you signed up for either or both uTest or Payoneer you may want to file a identity theft report with your local police and then freeze your credit to be on the safe side. It never hurts to err on the side of caution.

On the off chance that both are legitimate you may want to wait on signing up with uTest until they offer payments via something other than Payoneer. Payoneer's fees are crazy, they charge you a monthly fee, a loading fee, a ATM fee and a ton of others. Plus they force you into a mandatory binding arbitration clause that you must opt out of within 45 days of activating the debit card. What ever happened to opt-in? Opt out SUCKS.

This really has me wondering if indeed uTest and Payoneer is yet another way to steal personal information.

Similar articles: uTest Baited Launch, The Service Isn't Even Available Yet (xrrg.com)

Also posted on Designer Today News

6 Comments

Comments

Posted by Roy Solomon on 2/11/2008 8:10 AM: I can assure you both uTest and Payoneer are respectful companies aiming to provide Legitimate services.
Currently debit card are the best way to PAY our testers community on a global scale.

In any case we will soon provide also Paypal and another payment method. So testers would have the ability to choose their preferred payment method.

Best regards,

Roy Solomon
The uTest Team

The uTest Team
Posted by Karel Soupal on 4/12/2008 3:12 PM: Hi,
they are in my opinion not scam. On the other hand I expected much more from the uTest.com service ... so far it is a bit of disappointment .. I have written on this here
Posted by oxyk on 4/29/2008 1:34 AM: lol, payoneer is a scam...
go ahead and check their partners, the real companies who pay to their employees in that way
i have payoneer debit card and it works as it should. not to mention that i can use it worldwide.
fees... if 3 dollars per month for maintenance and 2-5 dollars per load is expensive, maybe you can suggest better card with similar features.
and you should read payoneer faq to know that
Payoneer works together with the Royal Bank of Scotland and the First Bank of Delaware to issue and process cards
Payoneer has offices in New York and Tel Aviv.

and your post is real bullshit
Posted by jon on 5/26/2008 5:24 AM: Its been three months since the service has started. I wish to know if any tester's account has been loaded with funds and are they able to withdraw the funds outside USA. was there any difficulty or problem?. plz reply
Posted by angry on 6/5/2008 1:28 PM: Payoneer is a scam. After only one week of loading funds from various retail customers of mine, their "security department" froze the transactions and has yet to give me any response. Seems like just another PayPal, only this one takes your SSN information. Good thing my credit sucks already anyway, they couldn't make it any worse.
Posted by Alon on 6/12/2008 7:56 AM: I don't know about uTest, but I work with 2checkout and got through them the Payoneer debit card. Works flawlessly and I'm very happy about it.

Just my 2 cents.

P.S. If a company based in Israel it doesn't mean that it wants to steal your identity. To think so it's just plain BS.