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Brooklyn Yogurt Shop Sting Snares Fake Reviewers For NY Attorney General
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Reuters reports that nineteen companies caught writing fake reviews on websites such as Yelp, Google Local and CitySearch have been snared in a year-long sting operation by the New York Attorney General and will pay $350,000 in penalties. The Attorney General's office set up a fake yogurt shop in Brooklyn, New York, and sought help from firms that specialize in boosting online search results to combat negative reviews. Search optimization companies offered to post fake reviews of the yogurt shop, created online profiles, and paid as little as $1 per review to freelance writers in the Philippines, Bangladesh and Eastern Europe. To avoid detection the companies used 'advanced IP spoofing techniques' to hide their true identities. 'This investigation into large-scale, intentional deceit across the Internet tells us that we should approach online reviews with caution,' said Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. 'More than 100 million visitors come to Yelp each month, making it critical that Yelp protect the integrity of its content,' said Aaron Schur, Yelp's Senior Litigation Counsel."
Yelp is a crappy site that blackmails you into paying them for promotion of positive reviews and removal of negative reviews.
I clap my hands. Only question is - how did they found out who was paying for crimes?
that's huge money for such little work. especially in countries like bangladesh.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
"Yogurt! Yogurt! I hate Yogurt! Even with strawberries."
I am officially gone from
What has the world come to?!
it seems to me, if yelp is interested in preserving it's value to customers, part of that would be preventing fake reviews. why would we get our legal system involved? not to mention - when did it become illegal to lie on the internet...or conversly - when did the internet become even close to being legitimate enough that you need the legal system to protect it's truthfulness?
I've never used their services. Are they somehow relevant somewhere?
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
350K is the cost of business. No way does this stop without someone going to jail or a fine large enough to offset the profit generated by such shennanigans.
Internet comments are not to be trusted. *
* I was paid to post this comment.
I'm unclear: was this fake Yogurt shop actually listed on Yelp? Or did he just pose as a Yogurt shop owner and seek the help of SEO firms?
If the former, one might imagine a hapless Brooklynite trying to find this awesome place they read about on Yelp and being sorely disappointed when the address ended up being, what? A PO box? And then wouldn't they then go onto Yelp and report the address as wrong?
and only trust those that have details about what was wrong
anyone who has been online for a few years should have developed the skills to quickly scan hundreds of comments and filter out the trolls and shills
Where are the feds with this one? IP spoofing was one of the charges the feds used to intimidate Aaron Swartz.
This sounds suspiciously like a Seinfeld episode.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
This kind of thing has been going on for as long as there have been online comments about products. One of the first sites I ran was an infomercial product review site. I got some great reviews saying how good or awful products were (tip: don't buy Epil-Stop). I would also get a sudden flood of positive reviews on a product. At that time, the fake reviewers weren't too sophisticated so you could tell that the 100 positive reviews from 100 "different people" were coming from the same IP address. I'd junk them but even at the time it was a lot of effort for what was a one man operation. I can sympathize with the comments moderation teams at Yelp, Amazon, and any other place that accepts user comments on products but tries to weed out fake ones.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
What *exactly* have they been fined for? For being wrong on the Internet? There'd be huge financial opportunity in that.
Ezekiel 23:20
Anyone can post anything on the internet, it might not even be true. Whilst perusing the summary, I was misled into thinking that TFA was linked at reuters. But it turns out that I just burned up another instance of the NYT from my monthly allotment. I never get used to it. silly me.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
While I know Amazon doesn't write it's own reviews but they do almost nothing to prevent them either. I figure New York, the state of growing debts, is going to hit them next.
I can perfectly well understand that SMS writing/reading when in red lights. As I have seen many times people do same (not in USA) and they notice often lights have changed when car next to them starts leaving and then they just throw phone away to seat and start driving.
Few times they have not even checked the lights and when the next line has been on privileged turning line, they suddenly notice that there are other cars turning on their way and do emergency brake.
But what comes to navigation. That I don't understand. As even when it is same device phone+map together. You don't use multiple features simultaneously.
When you set your phone to navigation mode and attach it to dashboard mount, it presents a map on whole display like any TOMTOM etc.
The only difference is that TOMTOM can not receive phonecalls or SMS or send them. But when you are navigating, you do not write SMS or touch it.
I would not itself accept that person has a navigation in phone itself as without mount as that is just easy escape "Office I was only checking my map" when the SMS application was used and map launched with single tap to hide it. And because you are holding the device in your hand and not focusing to road with both hands on wheel.
So smartphones/tablets mounted to dashboard in navigation mode are fine to me. But same rules apply then as with TOMTOM etc. If you change route or you manipulate your navigation device when driving (being in red lights etc) then it is illegal. But if you don't touch it and you are in red lights, officers has nothing to say to you, as there is no any kind difference are you looking map from TomTom device display or Google Maps.
This is the best article ever published. It completely fulfilled my need for information and informed commentary.
Require reviewers to post a "selfie" with the product, at the place of business, and so on. They should have a profile picture too, naturally.
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
If I could write reviews all day, that's what I'd do. I mean $1/review and if you write 15 reviews in an hour that's $15. Not fantastic wage as my field's competitive wage is $80-$110/hr. but when you're in between jobs looking for a new one since your old company decided to outsource to another country, you're kinda in a bind to pay bills using any means necessary, and yes-- 100 fat chicks for $100 each will do. But what I don't get is what's so illegal about writing fake reviews? The whole movie and game industry is based on fake reviews, bribing companies if you will to write A++ reviews. Why aren't they getting fined? I call bullshit on these attorneys. They're the ones that need to be fined for harassing a business that used a website just as it's expected to be used by nature.
He wasn't charged for IP spoofing.
On January 6, 2011, Swartz was arrested near the Harvard campus by MIT police and a U.S. Secret Service agent. He was arraigned in Cambridge District Court on two state charges of breaking and entering with intent to commit a felony. On July 11, 2011, Swartz was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer and recklessly damaging a protected computer.
Anyway, just because one facet of a crime is similar to another one, doesn't mean the punishment should be the same.
I suspect most people lurking on this site have enough brains and savvy to ferret out many fake reviews posted on such sites, or at least take things with a very large grain of salt.
That is assuming we take the time. Then there is the rest of the population, who may glance at a Yelp! rating and take action from there.
It took me about 2 minutes years ago to conclude that rating sites like this would have a low accuracy rate. Why? I own a small business, and experience the general public first hand.
Further example: on Amazon, people can rate things for sale. A fair % of those ratings have nothing to do with the thing for sale, but with problems like late shipping or damage goods.
I don't anything against the lowest common denomnator, except that it's low and common.
Online reviews? LOL.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
...is cursed.
There's more than one kind of fake review.
One is just straight up lying, they got paid to post but never actually used the service/product.
The other is the way Apple does it, where just before the release of a new product "independent" tech blogs, and various other bottom feeding scum bubble up to praise their fruity overlords and go full gush on something they have never used (generate false excitement).
Then there are the reviews that while true, they don't allow or they remove bad reviews.
You're better off finding a forum involved in the product and getting information that way, also if you get involved with a bad product/service look into taking a few minutes to complain to the BBB or whatever is appropriate, other wise nothing changes.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
So with that in mind, how about they change their reviews to:
I was paid to write good review by [sleazy marketing co], but they are evil and never sent me any money.
... until all the fake reviewers are in prison for 10 years, and the executives of the businesses doing this in prison for 30 years.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
NOBODY CAN ACCESS THEM. DIE.
Well, yea but, how can we make this Obama's fault?
Discovering fake stuff on the internet is easy. Proving which miscreants posted it is hard.
The investigation sounds a lot like the one Wired wrote up about Google helping people get illegal drug sites high up in the PageRank.
They had recordings from helpdesk people on how to get around it.
Several recordings for (supposedly) different companies to help skirt the rules Google supposedly had in place.
I don't know why people believe stuff they read on the internet. Probably for the same reason they believe stuff sent out on television stations or hollered from pulpits or whispered from ear to ear across backyard fences. Gossip is popular but is only sometimes true.
Believe what I say.
This sting operation is a total waste of time and is itself a fraud, designed to make you think the NY a-g is protecting you. He's not. First of all, this is not a real problem. No one over the age of six is taken in by fake reviews. Second, once burned twice shy--if you are taken in once, you never will be again. No state action needed. Third, the spoofers will find a new way to post fake reviews. Go chase ripoff landlord, Mr. Schneiderman, if you want to do something that will help a lot of people.
That will work well for a lot of personal care products.
"Here's me with my hemorrhoid cream. Notice how easy it is to apply."
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is all I can think of.
it's just not that big a deal, as an analysis of Society's Use Of Yelp (and others) would have determined.
and as some folks have said.. ain't that yelp's problem? are they gonna police online resume sites too?
The way the Brits pronounce 'yoghurt' has always creeped me out; it sounds like said product is backing up on them.
Whereas 'aluminium' sounds as if they've gotten lost halfway through.
Starting a Tor client and using random exit nodes is "advanced"?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
I don't like the tactics, but I think the Attorney General has bigger fish to fry. A lot of politicians and cops that have been violating Constitutional rights, and violating tehri oath of office, so why the hell are resources being wasted on this trivial matter?
when they banned his IP and MAC address, Aaron Swartz simply changed them both. That's not acting in good faith
You mean kind of like knowing writing fake reviews on Yelp is against their end user agreement so using ip spoofing to avoid detection? Sounds like it's almost the identical thing to me.
Yelp has direct information in their database that an employer forced an employee to spoof a positive review. This same employer was involved in the use of rufinol, aka date-rape, class drugs. The same employer fired someone I know two weeks after their father died for no discernable reason except for stating that she was "sad," and "couldn't she wear [a red cocktail dress, against dress code] to work, then maybe I wouldn't fire her?" Multiple reviews on Yelp related to this, as well as directly to the customer service at this establishment from myself as an individual, were taken down on the flimsiest, or with no, reason.
Yelp's legal counsel should crumple up his memo and swallow it.
It's not like you'll be able to identify them by their face in those instances.
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing
For fucking crying the fuck out loud! These pieces of shit don't prosecute banks when most of their business model is defrauding people out of their actual money but spend a FUCKING YEAR setting up a "sting" operation against people writing fake reviews!!!! ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME!?????!!!!
I've fucking had it. The people who did this are absolute pieces of SHIT.
How much taxpayer money did they spend during the year in order to get this $350,000?
Just turn off JavaScript to keep reading the nyt.
Duh
Not my box, but iirc its the same at home, I go to incognito and burn through ten pages, since I haven't bothered to worked out cookie management in the new browser.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
A year or two back I posted a review of a food truck that was positive about the product, but negative about some of the business practices of the truck. The vendor complained to Yelp, and they pulled the review because it wasn't just about the product itself. Business practices matter as well, at least they should. And the ease that the vendor had in getting a negative review turfed tells me that nothing on Yelp is to be trusted at all.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
I had a yelp account, they censored negative images of the business I posted. I deleted my account. They are useless shills who police their users more than their businesses.