What is this strange site that offers you 5€ for a simple email in exchange ?

© Unsplash/Lukasz Radziejewski

The site “What happens at 1,000,000,000?” is breaking all the records. Its concept is as simple as it is surprising, it promises €5 to anyone who enters a code (visible quite easily when connecting to the page). While this may seem too big to be true, many Internet users have wanted to try their luck, to try to unravel the mystery behind what looks like a very classic scam.

But this time, without anyone really knowing how or why, the scam seems to want you well. All the people who entered the code actually received €5 in their PayPal account in the moments that followed.

A very wealthy donor or… a commercial operation ?

Here the mystery deepens even more, who could be crazy enough to give 5€ to the whole Earth ? Without receiving anything in return. Could it be the idea of ​​a particularly philanthropic billionaire ? To find out, several Internet users decided to investigate, and the reality could turn out to be much more mercantile than we hoped.

Indeed, this website seems to have been built by a marketing and communication team. So it is a safe bet that this is an advertising campaign (which must be acknowledged for its ingenuity and risk-taking).

Here is the link to access the site and try your luck (being very careful!)

€5 for data

Because in reality, it is not a question of receiving €5 in exchange for “nothing”, the wording of this sentence is misleading. Of course you don't have to pay, or subscribe to overpriced subscriptions or watch advertisements for long minutes, but you still have to give your email address.

It is then easy to imagine that the website is in reality only there to collect hundreds of thousands, even millions, of valid and used email addresses, to use them for commercial purposes. However, several Internet users have noted that at no time in the registration process on the site is it mentioned that advertisements will be sent to the email address provided.

Or this clarification is mandatory to use personal data for commercial canvassing purposes. This is one of the great strengths of the GDPR in Europe, which requires companies to ask for informed consent from the user on how their data will be used in the future.

Can you get back 5€ without risk ?

Faced with this risk of seeing your email address in lists of dodgy data, then resold on the black market to several companies so that they can advertise in your mailbox, €5 seems quite small in the end.

But then, do we have a chance of being able to recover this money, without endangering our personal data ? Although zero risk does not exist, it is indeed possible to recover this money, by limiting the risks as much as possible.

To do this, simply create a PayPal account and an email address that will only be used during this operation. These two accounts should not be linked to your online identity. It is quite easy to create a temporary email address. Sites exist specifically for this, such as Ten Minutes Mail.

In all likelihood, it is the neobank Trade Republic that is hidden behind this unique communication operation. The site still seems to be working, but the end of the countdown is fast approaching. It should be reached around 4 p.m. this Friday.

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