Shame on the AP for benefitting from complete nonsense.) (It seems the Associated Press has a pay-for-article service where this sort of thing is posted, no questions asked. Particularly galling is that one of the “reviews” for the PowerVolt device appears under the otherwise respected AP logo. How does it work? The claim is that you simply plug in the palm-sized device, preferably into an outlet near your circuit breaker panel, and “within a few days, it will begin to make efficient use of your energy.” government or its agents and subsequently used to develop everything from anti-gravity devices to death rays. It is based on the myth that many of Tesla’s greatest inventions were supposedly confiscated by the U.S. As in many frauds of this nature, the name of Nikola Tesla is invoked. They aren’t! Not a single one of them.Ĭut your electricity bill in half? Don’t fall for the PowerVolt scam. There must be significant money behind this scam, as pretty much the entire first page of Google search results on the key word “PowerVolt” is filled with what appear to be legitimate reviews. This particular variant is called the PowerVolt, perhaps designed to sound like the Elon Musk Powerwall battery and solar panel system for homes. In the case of the email forwarded to me, the contents were very basic: a raw URL with the key part having the official-sounding (registered in 2020), another line with the URL buried in descriptive text about cutting one’s electric bill, and an image proclaiming the same thing and linking to the scam URL. Although this one is currently making the rounds, I presume it has been seen before, and that it will continue surfacing. This simply had “scam” written all over it, right up there with claims of secret technologies buried by the oil companies to inhibit improvements to fuel consumption by internal combustion engines.Īs a physics teacher I’ve always felt a duty to do my best to dispel certain myths and scams. Recently, I just couldn’t resist a particular subject line: “BREAKING: New tech can cut your electricity bill in half!” it proclaimed. In nearly all cases the message is simply a forwarded post, and very frequently the only content is a link to a YouTube video. Most of the time I only glance at the subject line and don’t actually open the full message, so outlandish is the claim in that line. In my case, I receive emails from a particular correspondent several times a week. Sadly, some of them, perhaps most of them, appear to be part of the anti-vaxxer/anti-masker movement as well, but that’s a whole other story. I’m sure you have one or two in your circle of e-friends, well-meaning people who forward you via email every scam under the sun.
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