Well like some folks I have been sucked into playing a few facebook games. Now I am no where near absorbed in them so much as to want to spend real money on any of the games but many have. I mean lets face it the makers of the games didn't just create them for my free amusement, they want to lear con you into spending money or by visiting one of there advertisers so that they can get money.

Atleast with the money they are straight up asking it but its when you visit the advertisers that you get scammed. One of the other goals if you would call it is to lear kids into playing the games in hopes that they at the very least have a cell phone that mom and dad pay for. So how are they scamming you via cell phone? Well as a example one of the ways to earn extras in the games is to take a IQ quiz, ok that seams simple and free. Well once you finish you are required to enter a cell phone number to receive the results. Once you enter that number you have now subscribed to some monthly service that will now bill your cell phone. OK facebook say ohhhhhh no no no. Now what do the game makers do? Well that is easy, facebook headquarters are in CA so you simply block the IP's from that area from seeing those "no no" adds.

Techcrunch recently did a story on this: How To Spam Facebook Like A Pro: An Insider’s Confession

"In June 2007, Facebook opened up their application developer platform so that anyone could build games on top of the social network. By having access to user data, game developers could instantly make engaging, viral games. Rate who is hottest among your friends, share quizzes, race cars, grow vegetables, and so forth – all with a click of a button. Users in one click gave the game permission to access their profile data and they didn’t think twice about it.

Facebook hadn’t consider what was possible when the game developer passed on user name, profile picture, and personal details on to an advertiser – and the kind of deceptive ads that were possible.

These ads looked like they were from Facebook- the blue button, white background, same font. And, of course, they had your profile picture, your name – plus that of your friends, in the ad. If you’re a 15 year old girl, would you know what’s being served by Facebook, the game developer, or the ad network? These same offers have been running for years on MySpace, using tactics such as fake Windows system messages and pop-ups.

But the perfect storm being able to dynamically insert user data into an ad, disguising the ad to seem like part of the application, lack of enforcement by the social networks, and billing the parents’ cell phone – well, it’s no secret what happens next."

On Nov. 1st one of the bloggers for Techcrunch Michael Arrington confronted some of the advertising providers at a virtual goods summit with accusations of scammy behavior. That confrontation got heated:

So if you play any of these games you need to be careful and instead of paying money for the game just play the game for free.