Rules
1.) Never give out your social security number. NEVER! This allows people to steal your identy, regardless of whether or not you have Life Lock! Remember the ad where the CEO of Life Lock advertised his real SSN? Well, he had his identy stole a BUNCH of times.
2.) Never use a REAL credit card/debt card to do cash offers. Go to Walgreens and get a 25-50 dollar prepaid one if you need to use one (I discuss this at more length in the Tips & Tricks section).
3.) I cannot stress this enough. Do NOT use your real phone number! I'm not telling you to lie either. Register for google voice! It's free! Google will give you a new phone number to give out, and it will create a firewall between you and spammers. They won't be able to call your cell phone because they won't know the number. You have the option (for free) of having Google call your phone when it gets a call on the Google Voice line. I recommend you turn it on for a couple of days... Then turn if off once it gets annoying and just have it go straight to google voice voicemail.
4.) Separate dedicated email. This is sort of a given. Set up a free email account from Gmail, Yahoo, Live, etc. You will get spam and a lot of it. Some of the cash offers basically want you to sign up for daily crap in your email, and no one wants to deal with that on an everyday basis. Use a seperate email or two and it will save you a headache every time you check your real email.
5.) You're supposed to answer surveys honestly...but for some you might want to "typo" 2-3 numbers of the actual street number, leaving zip and city the same. You may also want your alter ego (John Smith or whatever) to fill out the name section. This is where you have to use your judgement. 98% of surveys won't ask you for personal info, but a lot of cash offers will. Some of them are obviously shady like, fill out a survey and get 50, 100, 500, 1000 dollar gift card. I really recommend that everyone has a slight identity crisis on those sort of sites.
5.1) To be clear: When you sign up for a survey site that you actually want to be paid from, you MUST use legit information. Keep in mind Google Voice is a legit phone number, while it costs a lot of money to print mail ads. I have not seen any increase in snail-mail advertising, so it is not something to worry about.
6.) Different password. Do not use the same password as your email address to sign up for a shady site. This is a common sense not-so-common sort of thing, but you are giving away your password when you do this!
7.) Up-to-date browser. I personsonally like Firefox, but it's personal preference. Also, updating your Adobe software every once in a while can't hurt.
