30/04/09. Poplans Review and Other News

Hi guys! First of all I know that many of you, mostly my European readers, will be celebrating the May Day holiday weekend starting tomorrow so if you are among that group then I hope you will enjoy the festivities as much as I intend to. Of course many people also regard the first day of May as the first day of summer so that’s another reason to celebrate. But anyway, back to business…

Today I’d like to take a closer look at one of the new programs I started monitoring recently called Poplans. As with all HYIPs it has its pros and its cons. It’s average enough in my own opinion, nothing special but to be fair it’s going well and the payments are being made without delay. So let’s see if there is something in there for you.

First of all Poplans is a short term high rate of interest program. Basically there are just two plans available to you but there are several variations within those plans depending on how much you want to invest. The first plan pays you a daily return and the second plan pays you a lump sum on expiry. This is how it works. In the daily plan investments start at a rock bottom $1. For amounts starting there and up to $1000 you will receive a daily payment of 12.15%. So considering the financial pressure on most people nowadays I will make the assumption that this will be the plan of choice for most so therefore I’ll give you an example. For a theoretical investment of $100 you can expect a daily payment of $12.15 for 10 days. Your principal will not be returned, as is also the case with every other option, so you will see a grand total of $121.50 returned to you in installments by the time the plan runs out.

As for the rest of the options in the daily plan, well sorry to look a bit lazy but as the others represent a more serious financial commitment I’ll just skip through them here and advise you to contact the site admin yourself if you are prepared to take the risk. They are 13.15% on amounts from $1,001 to $5,000. 14.15% on amounts from $5,001 to $10,000. 15.15% for investments ranging from $10,001 to $25,000. And finally 16.15% on amounts from $25,001 – $50,000.

And then there is the on Payment On Expiry plan. This also runs for 10 days. The investment amounts are similar to the daily plan but as it is a lot more risky, it is as you might expect a lot more profitable. For those of you who consider the reward to be worth the risk it works as follows. On investments between $1 and $1,000 you will be paid, on expiry, an amount equivalent to 142.32% of your original principal, which just like the daily plan, does not get returned.

As the rest of the plans are also of little relevance to all but the top spending investors I will just give a brief run through them here. $1,001 to $5,000 will earn you 155.32% on expiry. $5,001 to $10,000 will get you 160.32%. Amounts from $10,001 to $25,000 earns you 175.32% and finally, especially for the King of Sweden, lol, an investment from $25,001 to $50,000 will get you 200.32%. As usual I’m not going to tell anyone what to do with their own money but if you do happen to have a spare 25 grand lying around the house I doubt you’ll be spending it here. The only payment option available is LibertyReserve.

And so to the security. To be honest this is a bit hot and cold with Poplans. First of all it’s on a dedicated server so full marks for that. I must admit though that I am unsure about what, if any, protection from DdoS attacks is provided here. Feel free to pursue this with the admin if you consider it as important as you should. On the downside however they are using an unlicensed script which can be a very risky thing to do. Granted they are implementing SSL encryption, which of course is great, but if the script itself is unlicensed then are they really getting the full effect of SSL? Another feature is that they claim to have mirror sites. I checked this out but was redirected back to the main site. I am willing to accept though that this is possibly an option they are keeping “in reserve” should the need arise. Customer support is offered through an online e-mail ticketing system only.

So I think for several good points about Poplans, there seems to be an equal number of bad ones. There are several plans which offer attractive returns. Great, but on closer inspection the majority of them are completely beyond the budget of 95% of online investors, rendering them almost pointless. Plus the fact that it’s limited to LibertyReserve can throw it open to all manner of problems down the line. In fact to be blunt it’s just asking for trouble. And for all the good work the admin did on the site security, he then undermines much of it with an unlicensed script. Therefore I can only conclude that there is a slight amateur feel to this. But don’t take that as some kind of damning indictment of the program either. It’s merely a suggestion of caution. For what it’s worth the plan that most people will join is decent enough and to their credit, Poplans haven’t failed with the payments so far. Worth a gamble but just remember it’s a game so stay within a reasonable budget.

Other news for today.

Of course the main news for today is connected with another outage of LibertyReserve payment processor. It seems another huge DdoS attack hits the most popular payment processor once again. Does it mean that LibertyReserve is losing the battle with its competitors? No way, because I believe that LibertyReserve payment processor is quite strong and is able to survive and now the site is accessible in most areas of the world which helped many admins avoid the collapse of their programs and pay all the pendings in time. This is what can be seen on LibertyReserve blog regarding the recent downtime:
“Possible outages in some areas. We are experiencing a sophisticated DDOS attack. We, together with Prolexic, were able to successfully mitigate the attack, although some users might still have problems accessing our web site. We are working hard to make sure everyone will be able to access our web site. Thank you for your support.”

Such frequent downtimes can actually lead to reducing the LibertyReserve‘s market share in the highly competitive payment processor business and even losing their leader’s position to other competitors, such as PerfectMoney that just sent another long update today reminding the customers of their unique features which other payment processors lack. Is it a coincidence that the update was sent during LR downtime? I don’t think so. Anyway, here is the update from PerfectMoney:
“PerfectMoney announces new features!
Dear Customers, if you fail to visit our site everyday you will be greatly surprised by the progress of PerfectMoney, its extended features and its positions on the international market.
You and your business now can benefit from the following items:
[x] Cards Visa Virtual which can be obtained within the account and then used to pay in various Internet shops worldwide;
[x] e- Voucher, virtual prepaid vouchers which can be created independently within the account. e-Vouchers can be sold or bought to fund the account;
[x] Sending money directly to mobile phone. If sent, the receiver gets an SMS message with an activation code for e-Voucher which can be used to fund the account;
[x] Section Analytics where you can track all the currency trends, read the freshest analytics and see how profitable your e-currency exchange operations can be;
[x] Section PM for business, created especially for those who make business on the Internet. Here you can join one or several programs which in practice will show you how profitable from material point of view the partnership with PerfectMoney can be;
[x] A number of exchange services and Internet business projects which accept PerfectMoney has increased greatly.
[x] PerfectMoney has installed EV (Extended Validation) SSL Certificate on our site which you can see in a green browser bar.
We regularly inform our clients of all the successes of our company.
Keep the track of the latest events since PerfectMoney implements the leading technological developments in the fields of electronic finances.”

Some programs have informed members about the current LR outage when no payouts to LR can be done. The admin of the just recently reviewed program PrismoFunds (read the review here) Lize sent out an update where the members were told that all the payouts are on time and PrismoFunds is making good progress so far. Another update will be sent to the membership soon but for now let’s hear the latest from them:
“Hello Members, Just here to inform everyone on all payouts. LibertyReserve is not available for me. It seems there having problems worldwide again. I first tried using the SCI Interface but It kept timing out. I then moved to try accessing from the main site, again not available.
Once the come online working enough to send payouts I will be right here sending them out.
All other payouts have been processed. Tonight I will be sending out another newsletter on the excellent progress PrismoFunds has made!
Thanks for your Support! Enjoy your day.”

The admin of ImperialFinances program (read my detailed interview with him here) sent two updates today. The first one was regarding LR downtime and the second one touched on the topics of the contests which are currently running and spamming emails from members trying to promote ImperialFinances in a dishonest way. Read the latest update from ImperialFinances (reviewed here) below:
“Hello dear members, This is the second newsletter for today, but I think this is necessary.
Rick received last night a couple of emails about a spam that appeared to be from an ImperialFinances member: “register”.
Member “register” has been deleted from system anyway.
I believe this spam was launched by another program, a competitor, jealous on ImperialFinances success.
Remember: ImperialFinances will never send spam emails. Will never sell or rent email database.
Something that I almost forgot. Somebody was very very close to the real number of members. He missed the real number with 4 members.
Here is another hint: bigger than 430, smaller than 515. Guess contest continues. $10 for the winner.
P.S. Meanwhile, LR recovered and every pending was processed.”

Many programs would have been affected with LR downtime but fortunately it didn’t last long. But nobody knows what will happen tomorrow and the threats can come not only from the sudden outage of a popular payment processor but also from hackers. Hassan-Al-Fadi seems to have fallen victim to hackers again. From what he told me I got the impression that there is some loophole in his site that gives the hackers easy access and allows them to change the path to the accounts. Hassan-Al-Fadi therefore again asked me to change all the links to the mirror site with .com extension. Of course I did it but what is the guarantee that it will not happen again? Anyway, it seems this hacking incident didn’t affect the payouts and I got another payment from Hassan-Al-Fadi today to my StrictPay account. Tomorrow though you shouldn’t expect any payments because of the Bank holiday in the UK – May Day. There is an announcement about it on Hassan’s site already:
“All Payments are made (LibertyReserve pending due to LR downtime). Please note there are no payments due to a public holiday on the 1st of May.”

Despite the LR outage that made most of the news today I got paid from many different programs over the last 24 hours including: FinancialProfitsCorp, NanoMoneyCorp, SilverLodge, Hassan-Al-Fadi, ProjectSurf, Treckswana, ImperialFinances, GoldNuggetInvest, NovalexFinance, Verifield, CascoFunds, EnscoOffshore, PanaMoney, GeniusFunds, NorthBizz, GearsOfProfit, FlowBroker, AsianInvestGroup, InvestmentForge, Poplans, PrismoFunds and DamexTrade (the first payment received). Happy May Day, everybody, and stay tuned for another review of DamexTrade program tomorrow and all the news from the industry you need to know!