Credit Report Scam

If a website tells you they need your credit card for membership registration and they promise you they are not going to charge you anything till you are ready to purchase their service, don't believe it.

I visited a website which supplies dropshipper datafeed service, it is a completely free service which does not require any purchasing. I was asked to fill in the credit card data, and I was told clearly that nothing will be bought, no transaction will be made.

After a few weeks, I found out that there’s an unauthorized transaction from some credit report company, the transaction amount is around $20. Searching that credit report company name plus the keyword scam, there are numerous complaints about this company. Some people suggest that only card cancellation would work, or this credit report company will keep charging $20 on a monthly basis.

How did all that happen? I think “someone” from the datafeed service website work with the credit report company in some way. By sending an order to the credit report company, “someone” can earn some affiliate money.

Should I follow Google Adsense recommendation?

Recently I received a Google message saying that I should replace my 336x280 ad with a 300x250 one. Is Google Adsense recommendation any good? Should I follow their recommendation? The message is sort of like this:

"Replace your 336x280 ad units with 300x250 units
20%-30% predicted increase in earnings.
Ad unit "blah blah blah" is size 336x280. Our tests show you're likely to earn more if you replace it with a 300x250 ad unit. Learn more."

So I tried to search on the Internet for some advice. Here is what Google wrote in one of their help files:

"We have strong confidence in our simulations; but we watch implementations closely to determine whether there's skew in results, and whether we need to alter thresholds. We don't believe there are situations in which one of our recommendations will result in a loss of revenue, but if you have an example case, we're interested in hearing about it."

They sound pretty confident in what they are doing. Alrighty! let's do it! If this change is significant, I will report back in a few months.