Scam 1 — The "registration fee"

You sign up for what looks like a survey site and are told you need to pay £1 (or "verify" your card) to activate your account. There is no survey. The fee is the scam, and the card details you provide get sold.

Never pay to join a survey site. Every legitimate panel is free to sign up to and free to withdraw from.

Scam 2 — The "you've won" email

You get an email saying you've won an iPhone, a £500 voucher, or a large cash prize. Click through and you're asked to answer a few questions, then pay a small "delivery fee" or "tax". The prize doesn't exist. The fee is the scam.

Scam 3 — The long survey that never ends

You spend 40 minutes filling in a survey. Then the final page asks for your bank details "to process your reward". There is no reward — the site is harvesting financial data. This one is especially nasty because you've invested real time before the trap springs.

Legitimate panels never ask for bank login credentials. They pay to a PayPal email, a bank account number, or a gift-card code. That's it.

Scam 4 — The "recruit 5 friends" pyramid

The site tells you that to unlock your earnings, you need to invite 5 friends who each need to invite 5 more. This is a pyramid structure — the payouts, if any, come from new recruits, not from survey work. It's a classic MLM scam dressed up as market research.

Scam 5 — Fake Trustpilot reviews

A site shows 5-star reviews on Trustpilot. But look at the reviewer profiles — they were all created within the same week, all have one review, and none have profile pictures. The reviews are fake. Genuine panels have a mix of ratings and long-running reviewer histories.

Check the reviewer's profile on Trustpilot before trusting the review. Real reviewers usually have several reviews across multiple companies.

Scam 6 — The "passive income" survey app

An app promises to pay you a daily rate simply for being installed. No surveys required. In practice, the app runs in the background, drains your battery, uses your mobile data, and either never pays out or pays a tiny amount that never reaches the withdrawal threshold.

Scam 7 — The compromised legitimate panel

Sometimes a real, established panel gets hacked or its email list gets compromised. You receive a legitimate-looking email from the panel asking you to "verify your account" via a link that takes you to a phishing page. Always check the domain before clicking — yougov.com.secure-login.xyz is not YouGov.

Scam 8 — The unclaimed rewards claim

You get a text or email claiming you have unclaimed survey rewards from a site you don't remember signing up to. They ask you to log in to claim. It's a phishing attempt for reused passwords. If you use the same password everywhere, they now have access to your email, bank, or worse.

Red flags — the full checklist

  • Asks for money to join, activate, or withdraw
  • Asks for bank login or card CVV
  • Promises specific earnings (£500/month, etc.)
  • Requires recruiting friends to unlock payouts
  • No verifiable company address or registration number
  • Domain registered less than 6 months ago
  • Pressure to sign up immediately ("only 3 spots left!")
  • Asks for your national insurance number or passport details
  • No published privacy policy or terms of service
  • Site flagged by ScamAdviser, Gridinsoft or VirusTotal

How to verify a survey site

  1. Check Trustpilot carefully. Look at the number of reviews (less than 100 is a warning sign) and the age of reviewer accounts. Filter by 1-star reviews first — they're more informative.
  2. Check the domain age. Use whois.domaintools.com or a browser extension. Panels under a year old should be treated with caution.
  3. Search for the company. Real panels have a Companies House registration (UK), a website with an About page, and staff with LinkedIn profiles.
  4. Check SurveyPolice. Independent directory with user reviews specifically for survey panels.
  5. Look for a privacy policy. Real panels publish what they do with your data. Scams don't bother.
  6. Test with a small survey. Complete one survey, reach the minimum, withdraw. If the money arrives, the site is real. If it doesn't, walk away.

If you've already been caught

  1. Stop immediately. Don't send any more money — that's how losses compound.
  2. Change passwords on any account that shares the email or password you used on the scam site.
  3. If a card number was shared, cancel the card with your bank. Most UK banks will refund unauthorised charges.
  4. If bank login credentials were shared, change them immediately and enable two-factor authentication. Call your bank.
  5. Report to Action Fraud (UK) at actionfraud.police.uk, or your local equivalent. Recovery is rare, but reporting builds the pattern that gets sites shut down.
  6. Warn others — post on Trustpilot, Reddit, and vote on the site in our directory so it gets flagged.

The one rule that never fails

Legitimate survey sites pay you. If any site asks you to pay anything — a fee, a deposit, a "verification" charge, a "delivery" cost — it's a scam. There are no exceptions in practice.

See also