USF researchers tricked by scammers
Briona Arradondo reports.
TAMPA, Fla. – Scammers find a way to dupe people in new ways all the time, and now they’re targeting online research surveys that pay you to participate.
Some business researchers at the University of South Florida tried to do a study testing an anti-tobacco campaign when they discovered more than 40 percent of the data was fake.
The study used facial recognition technology to record facial expressions for how people responded to the public service announcements. The survey of responses would usually take place in person, but the study began in 2020 and was forced to move online during the COVID-19 pandemic. So people logged onto computers at home, and some scammers tried to be clever to beat the system and get the money promised for participating.
“We had people who were uploading stock images from the internet, just a static photo as opposed to having their faces recorded, and that was despite the fact that we said in the form for the research that we were going to check for quality before you were compensated,” said Rob Hammond, the director for Center of Marketing and Sales Innovation at the USF Muma College of Business. “Six out of the 12 public service announcements we looked at changed order when we removed the deceitful behaviors.”
Having so many fake responses in the study messed up the researchers’ original work.
“We were concerned about it thinking, ‘What are we going to…
