Is this Sponsorship legit?

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1

I recently was offered a big sponsorship from this company who claims to be a “newfound VPN company” called Surfnet. I became skeptical when I saw the domain .pro instead of .com or somthing more familiar. Anyway, here is the website: Free VPN Surfnet

Let me know what you think.

2

I personally wouldn’t stake my reputation on them as a creator, and additionally can’t justify even trying them out as an avid VPN user. This is all I can find on them, which isn’t much.

Pretending that the extreme worst case scenario happens and it ends up being a scam, harvests data, is malware, etc: Your viewers would then wonder if enough due diligence was done and the answer they would reach would most likely be “They took a sponsor offer from a company who’s website was only registered in June 2024 via a Russian LLC with most information completely unavailable due to applicable laws, and who’s product hasn’t been reviewed by any reputable outlet”.

Then as a consumer, I have zero reason to use or recommend them over Mullvad, Windscribe, or Proton: All three have a good track record and reputation, have desktop and mobile support, don’t need to waste their time with YouTube sponsors to sell their product, and two of the three have free tiers.

It’s not my business to ask how big the offer is, but for comparison, there was a post where NordVPN initially offered a 60k sub creator $15 per 1,000 views in the first two weeks with a cap of $800. With how expensive it is to operate a VPN company, and the expectation of a smaller company having a lower advertising budget, ask if the big surfnet offer sounds too good to be true.

3

There are 1000s of top level domains now and only so many word combos that aren’t nonsense for the top three TLDs. I wouldn’t worry too much about a .pro TLD.

4

OP, any update on this?

5

I just received an email from them today. It is absolutely a scam, their website is a direct copy of betternet vpn and the reviews that are on their surfnet website are taken directly from betternet. They offered me 1400 per post for a 1 min ad. which was too good to be true because I am a drone content creator with 80k subs

6

Today I’ve got offered a sponsorship from the same company, “SurfNet”, I wonder why they didn’t use their own domain email to contact me, they used ‘gmail.com’ address and the name on it was Pakistani or so. I’m 99% sure that it’s a scam, the VPN downloader is a ‘.msi’ too which is extremely sus.

7

I seen vpn in the beginning n all I needed to see. Give it up :sob:

8

same to me, i think that site is fake

9

Not sure if this is the same person or not. I’m in a Facebook group and someone just posted that their 85000 sub channel was hacked by Surfnet Pro VPN.

This is how they said it happened: “They posed as sponsors and when we worked out all the details of the video (this was through several emails, and checking their website etc) we went to log in to their app and they pulled all the data they needed from us. Now they are in control of our Gmail account and changed all the 2 Factor Authentication credentials so we can’t get it back very easily, if at all. We’ve got what appears to be a valid connection with one of the YouTube teams, it’s just waiting days at a time that are killing us. There’s no guarantee we will get it back at all, and would have to start all over from scratch. Gut wrenching.”

10

I received the same offer. This is all the information I have about them.

  1. A woman wrote me on gmail (she has a pic, although u cannot see her correctly) from a gmail/personal account, and not an email business that ends with the domain.
  2. Offered 2000 dollars for a minute ad in 2 videos (1000 ad per video) and told me the instructions. I need to make the ad and then they share it with them, they approve it and pay me (before publishing the video?). Also for the video you download the app and put the user and pasword they give you, in order to make the ad. Also the instructions they give you are very basic and don’t really care about it. Seems that they just want you to download the app and use it, so you can show it on the ad.
  3. The website they shared is an exact copy of another VPN called Betternet. It’s literally the same, they just changed the name of it.
  4. I asked for a contract and surprisingly they sent one with a real address on the Netherlands. In reddit someone said that they’re russians or smth with a Netherlands address. There’s no information about them anywhere, only their website (a copy of other VPN) and these Reddit posts about their ad proposals.
  5. The contract seemed legir btw, but then looked who signed the document and it’s Hari Ravichandran. Looked for it and it’s the name of the CEO of Aura Cyber Security.
  6. I’ve been looking on reddit for more information and seen that other people received similar proposals. I find it very difficult that a small VPN company offers such amount of money to small creators, looks like they’re trying to lure small creators with an unusually high offer. Also seen testimonials about possible malware in the app that you have to download.

Btw for reference my channel ahs +80k subs and 12M views last month (almost all views from shorts). Luckily I investigated and realized about this before doing it.

Conclusion: for sure there’s a malware in the app that you need to download and then they steal all your info. There’s too many red flags.

Hope this helped all of you. Remember to make a thorough research of all ad proposals before doing it, most of the times it’s a scam.

Edit: sorry for the long text :skull:

11

Is bad. See Technically Unsure’s partial reverse engineering. Things like talking to Telegram channels, wiping MBRs, forcing shut-downs, VM detection, searching for user data files and uploading them. He actually references this thread too

12

Guys, this thread has been mentioned in this video, you all need to check your system
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLP_pDrsrYc

13

For me it was $2000 for a 40 seconds ad in the intro. Which for my channel, it is way too good to be true.

14

I just got an email too, but if they’re a legitimate “up and coming VPN” service there should be SOMETHING about them on the internet by now. (Other sponsors, reviews, ect.)

Definitely fake imo

15

Any updates? I also received the same email.

16

Yeah same thing happened to me they took my account I couldn’t log in for like an hour or so and then idk what happened but I got the option to reset my password using my recovery email. For a min I thought I lost my channel I was so scared.

17

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18

not yet, they take long time to responses

19

Wow no update in 18 days? Did you attempt downloading it?

20

I got the same offer, the site seems legit, but just before downloading i got this feeling I should check with others first. Has anyone attempted downloading it?