Survey Monkey legit?

Jul 25, 2005 12 Replies

I recently got a request by SW to complete a Survey run by surveymonkey. When I clicked on the page the first question asked was for me to tell them my serial number.



Given all the spamming and phonie redirect links going around, I stopped there and just deleted the message. Is SW really telling you to give them your serial number to an independent party and doing it with a bulk email?



Doesn't sound like "best practices" since anyone can data mine this listserve for addresses. I get phonie bank requests all the time saying, "We need to confirm your bank number. Please tell us what it is!" Right.



Bob, Toronto


They do use Survey Monkey to do surveys. I see on the subscription page a couple links to surveys in the last couple weeks. Links fro mthere should be reasonably safe, if you're interested taking the survey. Give 'em an earfull.

I remember a couple years ago someone made a fake page to get people's CC #'s too. I wouldn't bother with that.

JAY

You can go to the SW website to get on most of the survey's they send out by email.

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current surveys are listed...

This does not look legit. Why would they need your country and SWX version if they also have the serial number? I would not respond to this survey.

There are currently two listed here:

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Of course you have to log in with your subscription number to access the surveys this way.

That is exactly the point. The survey which asks for your serial number is NOT on the SWX page on the subscription section. The surveys which are listed on the SWX site do not ask for serial number and never have.

Working with my VAR to clarify this issue I received the following response:

SolidWorks Marketing confirms that this IS a legitimate survey.

You might want to run this through your VAR to confirm this as well. But I'll admit the more I look at it the flakier it looks. Do you suppose SW has lost track of serial numbers and VAR correlations?

why not just give a fake sub number, and any other info you want to keep private, if you want to provide feedback ? surely swx needs only statistical info.

Incidentally, we recently had a phone call from our credit card co asking for a few minutes for customer satisfaction survey, my wife said ok and handed the phone to me (so I got stuck with it), it seemed legit because I was asked to confirm some info, at the end the girl asked in a by-the-way manner, for the number on my card----whoa! I asked her what survey company she was with and the phone number there, which google confirmed as correct ( I don't have caller ID ). At any rate, I contacted security at my card and they had no ongoing surveys I was told. I don't know what happened after that. But, the point is, you have to be careful these days.

Laz

If you don't think it is legit why give a fake number or respond at all? Maybe marketing is paranoid about individuals stuffing the box if they don't do this.

Anyway my VAR asked SW to be more aware of appearances. I think SW should have the email refer to the SW site and we go from there.

Naturally. I usually don't waste my time- but, there are those that might want to submit their opinions, provide feedback in order to make the product they use better.

Laz

Thanks for all the investigation.

I agree, I also don't usually have time to answer these surveys. My point is that I paid money for my license which is represented by the serial number. If SW is asking me and others to hand it out whenever it is requested, it makes my investment less valuable. If SW wants to keep serial numbers out of the wrong hands they should stop asking us to casually handout this extremely valuable information. Bob

SW has apparently removed the request for Serial Number. They had a legitimate reason to ask it and it was pretty innocuous.

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