Controversial HITs

hyway · Mar 30, 2016

Lepi said:
..
....
Not because I expect the cops to show up on my door step, but just in the same vein that we don't allow people to post torrenting sites.

Ha, I am on the internet ain't no cops no where I live.

electrolyte · Mar 30, 2016

Lepi said:
20 bucks says Amazon tells you that the best way to handle scam requesters is to clear your cache.

Yeah, basically. Here's what they told me:

Thank you for reaching out to us. I apologize for the concern this may have caused. I want to assure you that we take all claims of misuse of our services seriously and investigate each one. We will certainly investigate this Requester and take appropriate action as needed.

Any time you see a HIT that violates Amazon Mechanical Turk policies (https://www.mturk.com/mturk/help?helpPage=policies) or the HIT isn't displaying or working properly, please report that to us.

To report a problem with a HIT, go to the HIT and scroll down to the bottom of the page. Then click "Violates the Amazon Mechanical Turk policies" or "Broken" as appropriate. We recommend using these links prior to contacting us directly, as they ensure the report of the inappropriate HIT is forwarded to the appropriate department the fastest for review.

I hope this helps.
Thank you for your inquiry. Did I solve your problem?

Best regards,
Cherise F.
Amazon Mechanical Turk

Lepi · Mar 30, 2016

Gotta love them form letters.

I've found that if I actually say "Please do not send me a form letter" when I write in, I get a non-generic response... not a HELPFUL one, mind you. But it does generally lead to a person sitting down and typing out a sentence or two of dirty, dirty lies.

kryss · Mar 30, 2016

The MTC staff has been discussing this since Monday. We reached out to amazon, but have not heard anything back. Before Monday we had not been privy to any information regarding these HITs other than people saying they were scams without having anything tangible. After doing a bit of research we've decided to disallow posting these HITs on the forum on moral grounds, based on what we've found. There was enough evidence to lead us to believe there is a high probability of some type of fraud taking place. Please note, we're not disallowing them due to an Amazon TOS violation.

All of the following emails are from different requesters that have posted these HITs.

Earlier emails from February.

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Emails the mods here have received in the last few days.

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If you wish to discuss this, please keep it contained to this thread. If someone posts a HIT, simply report the post. Any and all discussions pertaining to these HITs posted in the daily thread will be moved here.

essjay · Mar 30, 2016

I could kiss you guys.

Type2Work · Mar 30, 2016

wise move, thanks

Coffee · Mar 30, 2016

Probably the best for the forum as a whole. If people want to find them, they are simple enough to find

Lepi · Mar 30, 2016

I love that one of the people called Mturk "Turkish Delight".

jan · Mar 30, 2016

I find it interesting that someone responded when an mturk worker emailed. If someone sent an email to me saying that there was work under my name at mturk (assuming that I'd never heard of mturk :wink:

, I would never send an email back. I'd probably just throw out the email.

If I thought the site was legitimate and I was really worried, I MIGHT send an email to the site and ask them to look into what is happening.

But an email back to an individual? Never. I'd think that someone was fishing for information about me or my email.

In any case, I guess the ball is now in Amazon's court. So, we'll see what happens

.

essjay · Mar 30, 2016

jan said:
I find it interesting that someone responded when an mturk worker emailed. If someone sent an email to me saying that there was work under my name at mturk (assuming that I'd never heard of mturk , I would never send an email back. I'd probably just throw out the email.

If I thought the site was legitimate and I was really worried, I MIGHT send an email to the site and ask them to look into what is happening.

But an email back to an individual? Never. I'd think that someone was fishing for information about me or my email.

In any case, I guess the ball is now in Amazon's court. So, we'll see what happens .

I've been thinking about it and I know that I wouldn't have responded, either. I'd think it was from that Nigerian prince we've all been avoiding helping for the last 20 years. The fact that someone IS naive enough to respond, though, lends some credence to me that none of this is aboveboard.

Jaded · Mar 30, 2016

jan said:
I find it interesting that someone responded when an mturk worker emailed. If someone sent an email to me saying that there was work under my name at mturk (assuming that I'd never heard of mturk , I would never send an email back. I'd probably just throw out the email.

If I thought the site was legitimate and I was really worried, I MIGHT send an email to the site and ask them to look into what is happening.

But an email back to an individual? Never. I'd think that someone was fishing for information about me or my email.

In any case, I guess the ball is now in Amazon's court. So, we'll see what happens .

My thought process on that is that they don't really know we're just turkers, or peons or whatever. The email gives us ID's and everything, they may think we're "official" workers. Like some type of rep from the "Amazon Mechanical Turk Department" (Which is how the footer reads)

Lepi · Mar 30, 2016

All of the responses seemed to think that the workers were in a position to fix the problem. I assume they thought they were responding to actual Amazon employees, as opposed to random freelance grunts.

That one guy even blamed the worker for it, like he thought the worker was the one who had caused the problem.

jan · Mar 30, 2016

Jaded said:
My thought process on that is that they don't really know we're just turkers, or peons or whatever. The email gives us ID's and everything, they may think we're "official" workers. Like some type of rep from the "Amazon Mechanical Turk Department" (Which is how the footer reads)

You might be right. But I have an email account attached to an internet provider - and I got a very official email from them about my account. I did a triple take. But I still didn't respond directly - I went on their forum page and investigated - and saw that it was a scam.

One thing that might support the theory that the email respondents are all part of the 'scam' is that they all responded the same way. If they were interested enough to email back, you'd think they would want to explore what was being said and ask for more information.

But............ :shrug:

.
Amazon needs to track this - it should be easy for them...............

Tuesday · Mar 30, 2016

I think that is the right thing to do. Shit, I'm sorry, for pretending to have any kind of opinion about things that you guys have been dealing with for a long time. I just don't think it's worth the risk. There are other ways to make money on Mturk.

essjay · Mar 30, 2016

electrolyte said:
Yeah, basically. Here's what they told me:

want to assure you that we take all claims of misuse of our services seriously and investigate each one.

Click to expand...

If they wanted us to believe this, they should give us the opportunity to explain why/how it violates ToS.

TSolo315 · Mar 30, 2016

jan said:
You might be right. But I have an email account attached to an internet provider - and I got a very official email from them about my account. I did a triple take. But I still didn't respond directly - I went on their forum page and investigated - and saw that it was a scam.

One thing that might support the theory that the email respondents are all part of the 'scam' is that they all responded the same way. If they were interested enough to email back, you'd think they would want to explore what was being said and ask for more information.

But.............
Amazon needs to track this - it should be easy for them...............

Each "name" they use is also attached to an Amazon account with history (like reviews on stuff bought from Amazon, wishlists) Those reviews are not written with a similar writing style between accounts. They are not just throwaway accounts from the same people.

Pleco · Mar 30, 2016

Et tu, mturkcrowd?

bxpretzel · Mar 31, 2016

well, I admit this is frustrating and annoying. I just started doing these and now they're "banned" from being posted. are there any other forums where they are still allowed to be posted?

Coffee · Mar 31, 2016

bxpretzel said:
well, I admit this is frustrating and annoying. I just started doing these and now they're "banned" from being posted. are there any other forums where they are still allowed to be posted?

If you use hitscraper, they pop up all the time. People on other forums often ask how to get rid of these results since they are so annoying. The common keyword in most of their titles is "easy".

kryss · Mar 31, 2016

bxpretzel said:
well, I admit this is frustrating and annoying. I just started doing these and now they're "banned" from being posted. are there any other forums where they are still allowed to be posted?

I don't know what forums are allowing them. I know that mtg doesn't allow them to be posted. I would assume TN doesn't either.

There are a few mentions of credit card fraud in those emails, with that in mind we just can't allow them on the forum.

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