I search the Internet for organizations that are focused on energy management. Posts here on the blog reference interesting ideas and get posted on to my twitter account. Occasionally on my twitter account, I get followers purporting to have some information about free energy. Following these links has led to more than a handful of bogus sites, interconnected, that offer some kind of information (books, videos), for a fee, which will help you create your own cheap, or free energy.
These some of the sites I’ve found:
- http://www.power4home.com
- http://www.freepower4home.com
- http://www.earth4energy.com (seems to be the central site, it’s all over the web)
- http://www.gstriatum.com/solarenergy
- http://www.clean-energy-reviews.com
Here are YouTube videos (which point to of their site,s Earth4Energy):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJUN1CTn1r8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYeynLy6pj8&feature=related
Look at the proliferation of bogus videos on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=earth4energy&search_type=&aq=f
Doing a Google search for one of the people referenced in the sites, Michael Harvey, reveals many sites about scams but these scammers have done their homework. In order to counter the negative sites, they’ve flooded the Internet with positive and/or neutral reviews. Unbelievably, they’ve even got a site that looks like it might be a site about their scams, http://www.earth4energyscam.org, which is actually one of their sites.
I did find a site by a guy named Peter Parsons who has done some comprehensive research on these folks:
http://www.nlcpr.com/Deceptions6.php
Interestingly he also sells a book about how to slash your energy costs so you should even be skeptical of him. His site seems legitimate and he has an interesting blog with meaningful information. This post speaks to the issues I am talking about: http://nlcpr.com/blog/?p=17
The Internet noise by these scammers is spread through what is known as affiliate marketing; not unlike Google AdSense. You’ll also see a lot of Google ads on these sites, so they’re making a bit on click-throughs. More sites means more click-throughs.
With all of the frustration over high energy costs, solar PV being so expensive for example, it is a crying shame that folks like this flood the Internet with scams claiming to provide the answers to cheap/free energy.
Bogus twitter accounts:
Move2Green, GreenEnergy2day, AlternativeERG, homesolarpower6, NaturalEnergyHQ, makecleanenergy, WilburKilroy
Updates, as I find more:
- http://enjoydiysolar.com – has a legitimate looking blog, Move to Green Renewable Energy
- They post articles on http://ezinearticles.com to give the article some legitimacy but it just points to: http://www.clean-energy-reviews.com/
- http://www.diysolarpowersystem.com
- http://unplugelectric.com/green-diy-energy-review
- http://homemadesolarpower.co.cc/
- http://electricityfromwindmills.com/
- http://www.residentialsolarpowerblog.com/
- http://www.gstriatum.com/solarenergy/
- http://www.buildownsolarpanel.com/
- http://www.homesolardiy.com – associated with NaturalEnergyHQ twitter account
- http://normsgreenenergy.com – following me on twitter, 1.23.2010
- http://www.solarenergyeblog.com – random find, 2.3.2010
- http://buildyourenergy.blogspot.com – associated with makecleanenergy twitter account, following me on twitter, 2.3.2010
- http://RenewableEnergyInsider.com – associated with WilburKilroy twitter account, following me on twitter, 2.3.2010
- http://www.ultimatesalessolution.com – perhaps the source of many of these sites – a pitch for an automatic business builder for marketing whatever. This from a twitter account, livinggreen50 – Ramona Goeke (which I blocked and flagged as spam), showing the face of a respectable looking woman who had 4397 followers and was following 4583 twitter accounts. The Bio: Promoting a longer life by being green and using green products. Save our earth for our grandchildren. Home business opportunities. 4.3.2010
- http://www.ambigrid.com/ – Finally, you can live *almost* completely self-sufficiently, from renewable energy sources. 07.21.2010
I do occasionally sell e-books as a hobby and time permitting will write a standard textbook, and agree that everyone should look at the content of all information sources with skepticism, including my own. There is no way to know what is legitimate without careful reading and asking yourself it it makes sense and take a guilty until proven innocent approach. I am particularly dismayed at the “internet noise” or as I like to call “internet saturation marketing” because it makes it extremely difficult for anyone to find quality material, let alone original material. Even “yahoo best answers” end up being copied by robots to make useless blogs designed to provide one-way links back to web sites that pay for search engine optimization. The internet is currently a mess.
Regards,
Peter