How do I spot a user testing scam?
A user testing scam asks you for money, promises a fixed income, or asks for a bank login, card number or identity documents by email or chat. A real panel is free to join, names the company and its address in its terms, states how and when it pays, and records only what it told you it would. Inflight never charges, never asks for logins or documents by email, and never uses your camera.
The signs
- A fee to join, a "starter kit", a deposit or a subscription.
- A guaranteed daily or weekly income. No panel can promise invitations.
- A job offer by text or messaging app before you applied anywhere.
- A request to receive a payment and forward part of it, or to buy gift cards.
- Asking for your bank login, card number, PayPal password, or ID photos in an email or chat.
- A product-testing job that mails you goods and asks you to review them for free, in exchange for keeping the goods.
- No company name, no address, no terms, no privacy notice.
What legitimate panels do instead
They are free. They name the company. They pay after a study, not before, through PayPal or a reward platform you already have an account with. Identity verification, where it exists, happens on the panel's own site with a verification provider, never by sending photos to an email address. And they say, before you start, exactly what is recorded.
Inflight: InFlight Software, Inc., 11 W 25th St, Floor 7, New York, NY 10010. Free to apply. Cash to PayPal after a study is approved. Identity verified with a provider before your first study, with Inflight receiving only the decision. Records your voice and the study tab while a red dot shows; never your camera, never other tabs.
If a message claims to be from Inflight
Inflight emails come from an inflight.review address and link to inflight.review. Inflight never asks you to pay, never asks for a login or a document by email, and never texts marketing. Forward anything suspicious to support@inflight.review.
Before you give any panel anything
Read is Inflight legit? for the five questions to ask of any panel, and apply them to every one.
Questions people ask next
- Is it normal for a panel to verify my identity?
- Yes, on the panel's own site with a provider. Prolific, Respondent and Inflight all do. It is not normal to be asked for ID photos by email or chat.
- Is it normal to be asked to install something?
- Some real panels have a recorder app or extension. Inflight does not; studies run in Chrome with nothing installed. Never install something sent in a message.
- I paid a fee. What now?
- Contact your bank or card issuer about a chargeback, and report it to the FTC at reportfraud.ftc.gov.