crooked and stupid...
...tied up in a big bundle of greedy. Attractive.
A California IT worker has been jailed for a year for stealing confidential data to make money by completing online health surveys. Cam Giang, 31, a former worker at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center, used the names, birthdays and Social Security numbers of other hospital workers to complete online …
A person steals/abuses the personal data of their co-workers, which is greedy and criminal behaviour and lets hope they learn their lesson, e.g., they should have setup their own questionnaire and their co-workers would have volunteered their personal details.
Co-workers discover the crime while they themselves attempt recklessly handover valuable personal information to bob only know what sort of company that is running these online surveys...
Filling out health surveys does give the respondent a selfish benefit too, beyond the $100.
It is in everyone's own interest that health research and spending be on the diseases that we have and that run in our family. Having you and your family medical history in the survey makes this possible.
Don't fill out the survey, that makes it look like what ails you is less common. Then they'll be less investment in what ails you.
Of course, while I'd fill out an on-line survey on physical medical problems, I doubt I do one on mental problems or sexually transmitted diseases.
Down here in Brazil the local kiddies generate the equivalent of a SSN to answer those surveys and websites that require the number to access/vote on some thing/etc.
I remember doing this back in the ol' dialup days in the '90s to access ISP's *cough* er, supposedly paid *cough* content. Although there were one ISP that checked the CPF with the name or some other data so it didn't worked. Always wondered how they did that...
I suppose there isn't a government API for checking SSN with other information, so why not just generate a SSN and a name and you're set?