Surf Junky is one of the internet's longest-lasting and most pervasive scams in recent years. It has been cheating users out of time and money since early 2005, and unfortunately it hasn't ceased to exist yet.

Every month, Surf Junky tightens its grip on the web by expanding its reaches into another country and language, scamming even more people in the process. I write this not only to inform you of the Surf Junky threat, but also to inspire legal action against the shady organization.

== What is Surf Junky? ==
Originally started in early 2004, the Surf Junky website (surfjunky.com, if you care to visit) proposed an interesting idea: their company would let you sign up for an account on its website and watch a sequence of ads that rotated every half minute or so. In turn for watching these ads, Surf Junky offered to pay its users $.45--up to $.75--for each hour a user's browser refreshed their ads. You didn't even have to watch these ads yourself; you could just minimize your browser and let the ads refresh by themselves, all the while earning money.

When a user accumulates $25 in their account, they get paid. Surf Junky offers verious payment methods including check, Paypal, and Storm Pay. It seems like getting the money one earns while viewing Surf Junky's ads is a snap!

On top of this, Surf Junky built an ingenious referrals system, allowing each user to refer their friends (and strangers) in order to earn a percentage of whatever money these referred persons accumulated over the duration of their accounts. The system itself was actually comprised of not one, but three referral levels, thus allowing the user to also earn not only money from the referrals he or she made, but also money from the referrals of referrals--and even their referrals, too. If one acted early enough and widely advertised one's referral link, there was a chance at getting quite a few referrals; I myself had referrals numbering in the hundreds.

It wasn't a bad idea really; by giving users the incentive of referrals, Surf Junky effectively had their users spread the Surf Junky link all across the web in a matter of weeks--like a self-replicating virus. Perhaps this was their intention.

== "Cheating" Surf Junky ==
Within a few weeks of its opening, Surf Junky stated that the use of Firefox (with its auto-refresh and its popup blocker) was against their terms of use, and that they would ban any user who used the browser or any other "3rd party software" in order to suppress popups. It did make sense, though--Surf Junky had to generate earnings somehow, and if all its users were blocking Surf Junky's ads, they'd be making no money at all. You can't pay users without money.

It didn't even take a week for the first group of Surf Junky users to find themselves being banned. However, many of those banned were not using any software deemed as illegal or used for "cheating". In fact, most of the persons who were banned were only a few pennies away from being paid, and had never even considered cheating.

The internet became flooded with accusations that Surf Junky was banning people who were in line to be paid, not those who used Firefox or "3rd party software". Heated debate continued for a number of weeks about whether or not Surf Junky was cheating its users.

Many began to speculate that when Surf Junky designated Firefox and other "3rd party software" as being used for "cheating," that Surf Junky was creating a means in which to ban its users without question. It certainly seemed like Surf Junky was banning quite a few people for violating their rules, and it was impossible that all of them could have been using Firefox.

== Everyone is Banned ==
The simple fact is that everyone is banned; it's built into Surf Junky's system. Once you reach the payout amount, your account is flagged, and subsequently terminated. This has been tested, and time after time the same result is found--Surf Junky bans those near or at payout. They're dodging payment and effectively robbing their users of the money they had promised. Why?

Greed, of course.

Surf Junky needs you in order to view their ads, and it has promised to pay you so that you will view the ads. It made the promise that you would make referral money if you spread their link around. They warned you that if you didn't look at their ads used Firefox, that you wouldn't receive any money. They've got the perfect lie in place to use you until they need you no longer--when they're done with you, they have a line of new and unsuspecting victims waiting.

== Do the Math ==
If Surf Junky were a legitimate company, the mechanics of their income and payment would be impossible. Sustained by ads alone, Surf Junky would be losing money if they paid out to each user who reached the payout amount.

Surf Junky actually requests on its website approximately $190 for an advertiser seeking one million hits. Since the payout amount is $25, only eight users are needed to reach payout in order to cost Surf Junky $200. Each of these eight users would have to view the ad more than 125,000 times in order for Surf Junky to break even.

Since it takes about 60 hours for a user to reach payout, every user would have to view over 35 ads per minute in order for Surf Junky to meet its quota. But since Surf Junky only refreshes the ads about every half minute or so, it is impossible for them to make enough money in which to pay even a small percentage of their users.

Please keep in mind that this is barring all referral earnings, which would cause Surf Junky to lose even more money!

More detailed information about this can be found here.

== The company (and people) behind Surf Junky ==
A group of investigative users has found out that the man behind Surf Junky is named Jean-Marc, and he operates a shady group known as Primo Creations that has been known to scam others in the past. A precursor to the Surf Junky website was Autosurf.biz, but it has now closed and been resold to another person.

Jean-Marc will no doubt strike again, seeing as that every scam he has created has succeeded in making him lots of money.

== The Threat ==
Surf Junky will not respond to your complaints. In fact, they won't respond to you at all, even if you email them asking how to sign up for an account. Surf Junky has been silent about everything, and unlike most scams, their website was not taken down when the vast majority of its previous users discovered it was a scam.

Surf Junky's persistence has enabled them to spread to different countries under different languages. Same promises, same scam. Unfortunately, those living in countries that do not speak English are unaware that Surf Junky is a scam and are decieved just as we have been in the past. (Even now, some of us are *still* decieved!)

My own page about the Surf Junky scam has been translated into four other languages by people who claim that the Surf Junky scam has spread into their countries. Just as it has in the English world, Surf Junky now scams internationally, with an ever growing pace.

Can Jean-Marc and his Surf Junky website be stopped? If not, what is to stop him from coming back with a new website next year?

About the Author: The author of this article is the webmaster of Merkey.net, an esoteric geek community focused on the future of open media. Check his website out if you're into that sort of thing.