GIBill.com before disclaimers that it was not a government website were added. Archived July 2011.
If you were a veteran wishing to use your GI Bill benefits to pay for a college education, you might reasonably assume that a website called GIBill.com that offered
suggestions for "military-friendly colleges" and "GI Bill schools" was a solid source of information. GIBill.com was actually set up as a marketing site for for-profit colleges looking to get their hands on GI Bill money, but
that scheme is over, at least at this URL:
This week, the Kentucky Attorney General’s office reached a settlement with [marketing firm] QuinStreet, which includes an agreement to turn over the GIBill.com domain to VA, as well as to shut down its related social media sites on Facebook and Twitter. According to a statement from the Kentucky Attorney General, the move to relinquish the domain and hand it over to VA was an “unprecedented achievement and one which significantly raises the bar for similar settlements going forward.”
Through GIBill.com, QuinStreet diverted student Veterans to their for-profit school clients—schools that are also under scrutiny for allegedly taking generous GI Bill tuition payouts in exchange for degrees of questionable value amid higher dropout rates—especially when compared to non-profit private and public universities.
GIBill.com had
already been altered, after the site came under investigation, to include prominent disclaimers that it was not a government website. The GI Bill is exactly what makes veterans such an appealing target for for-profit colleges, since GI Bill payments don't count toward the maximum 90 percent of a school's revenue that is allowed to come from federal aid money. That's a powerful incentive for this shady industry to engage in deceptive marketing, and while this settlement should act as a deterrent, other, similarly deceptive websites remain.