13:34
2003-02-17
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E-Panhandling
Sites Gathering Steam in the World
Begging money online becomes profitable
business
There are a lot of beggars on the Internet, as anywhere
else. They are called cyber-beggars, while their
activities are called electronic panhandling. These
things are not really frequent to happen on the Russian
part of the Internet, the so-called Runet, although
cyber-beggars in the USA collect tens of thousands of
dollars.
Have you ever met a beggar on the Internet? It does not
go about spammers here, but about those people, who
launch their own sites to ask visitors to donate some
money for them. Such a phenomenon is very rare in Russia
now. A webpage owner might ask to borrow some money, and
that is basically all. Begging for money online in
America has already become a business. Yahoo! portal has
a category entitled E-Panhandling. There are dozens of
them there. CyberBeg portal contains about two hundred
of them. The titles of cyber-begging sites presumably
start with such words as save, rescue, help, or give,
send, pay, lend. Cyber-beggars do not ask money to buy a
piece of bread, they need money for goods and services.
A lot of them need to pay their debts. They beg to clear
a credit card debt, to make a breast enlargement
operation, to pay for medical care or education, to help
a woman to divorce her husband, to make a movie or an
album. Beggars ask for various sums of money: from
several cents to a million dollars. Most likely, they
ask to send them as much money as you can via the PayPal
system.
New York Times confirms that the
e-panhandling epidemic was launched together with Save
Karyn website. Therefore, the date of June 23, 2002 can
be considered the cyber-begging birthday. If a webmaster
of a begging site provides his or her full name, as well
as the detailed description of a trouble, this site will
enjoy great popularity amid benefactors. It goes without
saying that if a benefactor-s problem has something in
common with the one of a cyber-beggar, a webpage will be
even more popular.
Kimberly Smith, the mother of five children, was
inspired with Karyn Bosnak-s success. She decided to
launch Save Kimberly website. She asks visitors a dollar
or two for settling her debt v over 25 thousand dollars
v and for buying a house for her family. Despite the
fact that there were a lot of touchy stories and
children-s photographs on the website, Kimberly Smith
has not had an opportunity to enjoy her success yet.
However, Michel Huang managed to obtain $3300 (with the
help of cyber-begging) for a breast enlargement
operation. As she said, a so-called donor, who wished to
remain anonymous, gave her $1200. Another popular
e-panhandling site HelpMeLeaveMyHusband, which was
launched by someone named Penny in August of 2002,
brings the profit of $75 per week. Two thousand dollars
have already been collected, while twelve thousand are
needed. Canadian woman Jennifer Glasser suffers from
Lyme disease. She tries to collect money with the help
of her site Help Jennifer. She needs to pay the debt to
her mother ($32 thousand), to undergo the fourth stage
of her medical treatment ($64 thousand). To crown it
all, she needs $450 of monthly spending. Save Jennifer
site was opened in August of 2002. For the time being,
Jennifer has collected about $5.5 thousand ($3.5
thousand were donated by one person). Kellie Cudaback-s
success with her site Save Kellie is very humble v five
dollars (her husband left her the debt of $20 thousand).
All those sites claim to be true and serious. By the
way, cyber-beggars donate money to each other sometimes.
This is something like a mutually beneficial promotion.
Of course, there are people, who wish to promote and
advertise e-panhandling sites. Steve Donohue, for
instance, created the webpage called SaveMeSites. This
page is meant to help e-panhandling sites to have better
banner exchange systems, or to obtain better search
engine indexes. It goes without saying that there are
lots of jokers among cyber-beggars. You may find a man,
who asks people to make him richer than Bill Gates.
Someone else begs for money to buy a new guitar, or a
Hummer jeep ($120 thousand) and so on. There are
swindlers too, for everyone knows that real beggars
often work for criminal groups. The same happens online
v the Internet is the mirror of the society, although we
will not dwell upon this subject here.
The people used to donate their funds to salvation
armies, Greenpeace activists, and other charitable
organizations. Now those people are ready to give away
their money to someone that they have never seen before.
Experts believe that cyber-beggars get more and more
talented every day, making their websites more
technical, making their stories more touchy. On the
whole, the e-panhandling business prospers and
flourishes before your very eyes. Cyber-beggars evoke
compassion and sympathy with professional sincerity, so
to speak. Of course, the ground for online beggars is a
lot more fruitful in rich America at the moment. Who
knows, maybe there will be e-panhandling sites on the
Russian part of the Internet as well. An expensive
operation for a little kid might be a very good start.
Pravda
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