Brendan Lewis is a serial technology entrepreneur having founded: Ideas Lighting, Carradale Media, Edion, Verve IT, The Churchill Club, Flinders Pacific and L2i Technology Advisory.
“I got an email yesterday from a journalist who wanted to know about scams and dodgy websites. Basically the question was: “Is there a resource you use to understand whether something is right, wrong or just a scam?”. Well there isn’t any particular website, but if there was it would be likely to be instantly out of date because you simply can’t keep up with the Nigerians, Romanians and Russians, let alone your local Wide Boys.
“But having a think about it, I came up with a number of ideas that I’d thought I’d share.
“Commonsense
The old saying goes: “If something looks too good to be true it probably is”. I tend to trust my nose, eg. if an eBay reseller has 900 recommendations that are all positive, one line long and made roughly six seconds apart – things probably aren’t squeaky clean.
“Emotional Google Searches
I like to do a Google search with an emotional term next to the piece of software I want to research, eg “Jomsocial crap” brings up discussions in web-based forums where real users let loose – rather than someone paid to do a review. The weight of public opinion is useful.
To read more of Brendan Lewis’ blogs, click here.
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