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Unfortunately, it's also a great place for getting scammed.

There was once a time when it was pretty easy to spot a scam on the Net. They were often promoted through badly designed websites filled with ultra-large gaudy-coloured flashing headlines and the prolific use of multiple dollar signs.

These days however, things are different. Scammers are increasingly using slick websites and leveraging the credibility of unwitting accomplices when promoting themselves.

I spied a great example of this over the weekend when I visited the NZ Herald's website for a daily news-fix.

Now most of us realise that it's unreasonable for a major publisher to vet the bonafides of all its advertisers so as to weed out possible scams -- but there are still a lot of people who believe that if an ad has been accepted by a publisher of significance then it must have some credibility.

I have no doubt therefore, that the ad for paidsurveysonline.com carried by the NZ Herald on this page will have caught out some Kiwi websurfers.

In this instance, the NZ Herald had even less control over the products and services being advertised than it would normally have -- since the ads are being served by Google.

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Google's syndicated advertising system is a brilliant idea and allows many websites both large and small to generate valuable extra revenues.

However, as shown in this case, it does carry the risk that you'll be exposing your visitors to scams -- and that's not a good thing.

But it's hardly Google's fault either -- it's simply a flaw in the automated, syndicated web-based advertising model.

I strongly suspect that if a websurfer decides to visit an advertiser like paidsurveysonline.com and sign up for their service, they'll only remember that it was advertised on the NZ Herald website -- not that it was served by Google or that it was something not necessarily endorsed by either party.

But what's wrong with paidsurveysonline.com anyway?

Well check out what others have to say about the "service" offered by this website:

• usenet comments
• comments on the web

Now that the NZ Herald is aware of this, I wonder if there's any legal obligation for them to refuse to display further advertising for PaidSurveysOnline.com?

The bottom line is that this kind of syndicated third-party advertising poses real problems for all concerned and does represent a degree of risk for sites like the NZ Herald, who risk their reputation each time such a scam makes it onto their webpages.

I wonder if the Herald, and the other NZ-based websites that use Google's syndicated advertising service, now consider the risks worth the revenue that use of such a service represents.

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