While using the very useful stumbleupon application in firefox earlier today, I came across a very interesting article from Time.com.  As anyone who uses Facebook these days knows, games like "Mafia Wars," "Farmville," and "Restaurant City" have taken over.  It seems nearly impossible to log onto Facebook without seeing who found what animal wandering around on their farm or who needs help killing mobsters.  Personally, I never saw the appeal in these games, I have enough useless, time-wasting hobbies as it is, but I can see how people would get into these games.  These type of simple online games have always done well, you can look at yahoo.com or addictinggames.com as examples.

The interesting thing about these games that I would be willing to be nearly 0% of the players know, is the scam lying beneath the surface.  As many people in the internet world know, lots of, if not most, websites make money off of advertisements.  Thus, when playing one of these addicting Facebook games, seeing ads all over the page should not come as a surprise, in fact many people probably manage to completely ignore them.  The issue lies with the people who can't ignore those teasing little ads claiming that beautiful, single women sit and wait for you just to sign up with their website, or that the average IQ of the Chicago Bears is 110. 

The article from Time.com (http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1935698,00.html) got to the bottom of these little ads and it turns out they can easily be a scam.  It seems the unsuspecting person takes the IQ test to see if they really are smarter than their favorite Bear, and when they are finished filling out their answers, they are supposed to supply a cell phone number so the results can be texted to them.  The problem is, by filling out the phone number and a password, people are actually signing a contract.  According to the article on Time.com, the contract they sign is often for something like those monthly horoscope predictions that cost a ridiculous amount of money.  Things get worse from here, as many cell phone service providers refuse to cancel third party services.  In quite a suspicious coincidence, many of these third party vendors are difficult to track down, making that $10/month horoscope come back each and every month.

Another disturbing part of this issue is the fact that many of these games are aimed at children.  These children may click on the advertisements, and get signed up for these bogus services, all to be put on their parents bill.  While many adults are smart enough to think thouroughly about giving out their cell phone number, children often do not realize the consequences of their actions.  In another blog based on the subject, Michael Arrington of Tech Crunch (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/01/how-to-spam-facebook-like-a-pro-an-...), actually found a former executive of the social-networking ad world who admitted not all ads are up to the standards that they should be.

The obvious question now is how to combat this issue.  How do we keep children from signing up for these services?  How do we find these third party providers to cancel the charges every month?  Most importantly, how do we get rid of these scams once and for all?  If you have any ideas be sure to throw them in the comments, maybe we can at least tackle one of these issues.