Well, I was starting to write a post on this relatively new make money doing nothing scheme and after noticing it was starting to ramble(as usual), I figured another blog post conveyed my thoughts in a more succinct fashion.  That post is 5 reasons why GetTheBar.com will fail from the Living Room CEO blog.

Just a couple points in addition to what the author there has pointed out.

While the author touches on the fact that there is virtually no real info about the Boloto Group Inc. online, he doesn’t take it further and advise why that is a potential problem IMHO.

Despite the fact that many GetTheBar followers will say that this can’t be a scam because no money is being asked for, dealing with unknown entities such as this can have other consequences that could still cost you money, or worse.

  • You are giving personal info to a company and owner, Robert Donnelli that has almost no internet presence or reputation, good or bad.  While they claim that info gathered is used for demographics for “advertisers” and is not to be sold, the info given is a valuable commodity that they could easily sell without your knowledge.  What have you found online that shows they can be trusted?
  • Downloading a toolbar from a virtual stranger opens your computer up to some severe security issues.  Personally, I don’t even like downloading extra crap from companies I’m familiar with and have a reason to trust.  Again, what readily available info out there leads you to trust your computer, and in many cases, financial info, passwords, personal records, etc. to a company that has established no identity in its 10 year existence.

People just need to learn to evaluate these so called opportunities with their heads instead of their hearts.

Just like AllAdvantage and Agloco, the math does not add up to anything but disappointment in the end and your personal info in the hands of a complete stranger.

I just find it odd that an owner who was supposedly on the Chicago Board Options Exchange and a Wall Street technology firm has no internet footprint to follow, just like his 10 year old corporation that claims

The Company’s technology based applications impact many sectors including internet use, advertising, health benefits and commerce. The Company has invested over one million hours of engineering and development to deliver these applications.

Some examples of the press releases that lead to nothing:

Boloto Group Launches Free Online Membership – The Boloto Card
March 7, 2007  BolotoCard.com is a redirect.

The Next Generation Internet Has Arrived As Technology Company Introduces The First Ever Secure Way to Collaborate, Share Files and Conduct Business Within a Secure Distributed Community
December 29, 2004 — the “Library Card”  No site found

Businesses Remove Healthcare Burden From Employees With New Zero-Deductible Plans From the Boloto Group
Feb. 20, 2007 — bolotohealth.com/ still says beta 2 years later.

Until it all plays out, nobody can say for certain whether this is actually a sincere attempt at making a seriously flawed business model fly or just a clever scheme to gather information for other uses.

Edited on 02/28/09 to add the following:

Thanks to a recent comment on the LivingRoomCEO blog mentioned earlier, we now at least have a different site to look at — adsbyer.com

Before posting this, I actually did do a google search on the phrases ads by ER Exchange and ER exchange which brought up nothing.  Searching for just ads by ER did work.

The adsbyer.com site at least does a pretty nice presentation that letsyou run through a demo of setting up an account and ad.

For now, it looks like they intend to charge advertisers $0.10 per click for non-demographically oriented ads and $0.50 per click for demographically oriented ads.

One slightly important thing that their entire site fails to tell potential advertisers is that all members are paid to click their ads.  Instead, they word it as “our audience chooses to experience your presentation one-on-one for a minimum 5 seconds GUARANTEED”.  The reality is that the audience is obligated to click if they want to earn any money.

Oh well, it will be fun to watch it all play out and see how it develops.

Just an update on 3/22/12 as I was perusing old posts.  I attempted to go to getthebar.com and McAfee stopped me with this:

GetTheBar.com Phishing Warning

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