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Blackmail attempt left a Houston restaurant bombarded with 1-star reviews
- sithadmin 4y agohttps://archive.ph/2Bpk0 https://archive.ph/2Bpk0
- decremental 4y agoIndian scammers are such a scourge. Was watching some videos on Kitboga's channel. They're just horrible people with no conscience. People will try to say "But they're poor. If only we made them not poor they wouldn't need to scam." Learn enough about the nature of these scammers and you won't be apologizing them.
- cjbgkagh 4y agoI range ban India from my websites. Cut my spam by 95%.
- PaywallBuster 4y ago
- corrral 4y agoWhat's supposed to be at that link? I see a bunch of shit about Hunter Biden and what may or may not be this guy(?) gloating about wage theft.
- happytoexplain 4y agoFor me, the first thing is "leftwingers tend to be ugly and rightwingers tend to be beautiful". It seems to mostly be political shitposting.
- corrral 4y agoAh, yeah, that one's new since I posted. The account falls into "can't tell if this is a parody of right-wing "hustle" bros, or if this guy(?) is serious" territory.
- PaywallBuster 4y agofirst example from search result https://twitter.com/SaaSWiz/status/1528633428106588160 https://twitter.com/SaaSWiz/status/1528633428106588160
- cjbgkagh 4y agoI do wonder how many of the remaining 5% are Indians with VPNs. We’re in a niche industry so we ignore enquirers from people we can’t verify. So no big deal. Just a shame that we can’t really do business with India via a website. Edit: I don’t have a Twitter account so was unable to see what was linked
- spullara 4y agoWhy would you need a Twitter account? I just went to that link in private browsing and it shows me their profile page, which is the link.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- hallway_monitor 4y agoThis is honestly a great idea. None of my sites need or want non-US traffic. Why am I allowing it at all?
- corrral 4y agoNot a new tactic. A classic way to cut down exploit attempts to something you can actually monitor rather than a firehose, for sites that don't need an international audience, is to blackhole IP blocks from China and Russia. Sites have been doing that since at least the early 2000s.
- teh_klev 4y agoThis is futile. There's these services called VPN's that let me exit my traffic into the US.
- CSMastermind 4y agoFor a motivated attacker for sure but if you're just trying to cut down on run of the mill low quality stuff this seems effective.
- shapefrog 4y ago> This is futile. I will pop by and rob you later, I assume you have no windows, doors or locks and wont call the police after I clean you out because it would be futile.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ipython 4y agoIt’s not just India. Many of these come from Pakistan, egypt and other locations as well.
- hourago 4y agoBeing poor doesn't make people evil. Inequality is the one that creates evil. If one country has way more than other there is a big incentive to try to get that money. Australians are not scamming Americans, Swedes are not scamming Americans. There is no incentive. I agree that the scammers are scum. But you will solve nothing without changing the economic situation. I do not apologize them, in case you wonder. I am just being realistic that blaming individuals in a system with millions of people will solve nothing.
- gernb 4y agoWhy do so many rich people scam others? They're rich! It's certainly not because of lack of economic opportunities. Some said in another reply it was common to say in the USSR if we paid the police more they'd stop being corrupt. To which the response was, if that's so then how come the politicians, being paid ever more, are still corrupt. Doing bad has nothing to with being poor and everything to do with culture. A culture of entitlement, a culture of selfishness, a culture of lack of responsibility. To see what I mean, go to Japan, notice the poor don't steal. Why? Because it's not part of their culture. (PS: I'm not saying there is no crime in Japan nor am I saying there is no theft. I am saying that the poor general don't steal there, at least no compared to whatever places you're making excuses for).
- hourago 4y agoThe poor do not steal in India either. Do you know how many poor people there are in India? Do you know what miniscule percentage are scammers? You need to rethink how you see Indian culture. Japan has a history with the untouchable. Again, access to jobs, access to economic opportunities, created the Yakuza. Recommended to watch if you want to say that the system does not create criminals but it's a personal choice: https://youtu.be/SIsndKkasfI https://youtu.be/SIsndKkasfI
- 8note 4y agoThe Indian scams are a lasting effect of British colonialism. I won't hold it against people to get back what the west stole. At least there's no beatings or killings in the retribution
- jackdh 4y agoHow exactly are Indian scams lasting effects of colonialism?
- zakember 4y agoIts kind of sad what unemployment can do to people. India's unemployment rate has always been high and has kept going up post COVID. On the flip side, not all Indians are bad. I've got multiple chances to work with some of them in the past and they are just a refreshing change to work with.
- Thorrez 4y agoAccording to a recent post on HN, some of the scammers might actually be held captive and forced to scam people: >Captives are subjected to violence and torture, which is sometimes filmed and sent to relatives to spur them to send ransoms. Some have been killed and their deaths reported as suicide, according to workers who have escaped. https://maxread.substack.com/p/whats-the-deal-with-all-those-weird https://maxread.substack.com/p/whats-the-deal-with-all-those... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31949731 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31949731
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y agoIt is an awful situation. Sending money only perpetuates it though further enabling the real brains behind it to commit more egregious crimes. At some point, lesser evil is to say no.
- josephcsible 4y agoDoesn't Google track all of our locations? Why does it let people leave reviews of American restaurants when it knows they've never been outside of India?
- lancesells 4y agoI don't use any Google products on my phone or laptop and very few apps outside of Apple Maps have my location. I could go somewhere and leave a review without them knowing if I've been there. I mean they probably still know but they can't admit to it. :)
- moralestapia 4y agoTo make more money through selling ads.
- hedora 4y agoGPS is spoofable, and there's a strong monetary incentive to spoof it.
- onion2k 4y agoLocations services on phones use more than just GPS though. It'd be quite easy for Google to add a "Verfied" tag to a review if your GPS history includes the restaurant and a few points around the restaurant, and your WiFi SSID history includes a few of the same SSIDs that other reviewers logged, and there's a photo of the food that includes meta data that matches, etc. It could all be spoofed too but it'd become increasingly difficult.
- hedora 4y agoSSID history and photo metadata are also spoofable. At some point, only the spoofers will pass all the anti-spam gates, or you'll end up letting many of their reviews past in order to avoid blocking real users. At that point, it's starting to look like the wikipedia "be sure to read the chat page for this article if you actually care about this topic" problem.
- 4y ago
- MerelyMortal 4y agoIf it's the place at 800 Sorella Ct Suite 940, the reviews appear to be back to normal. The question is; did it take the article for someone at Google to fix it, or did their algorithm finally kick in?
- boomboomsubban 4y agoI find these stories amusing as I weigh the negative effect of the reviews vs. the benefits of getting a story "trending" and assume this event ends up being a net positive for them. Obviously it doesn't make the scamming acceptable, but the "tragedy lottery" aspect fascinates me.
- faldore 4y agoIt's called the Striesand Effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
- y42 4y agoIt would be Streisand if someone desperately tries to cover something by preventing public awarenes and then public awarenes kicks in. I would rather call it "there is no such thing bad publicity".
- hm10 4y agoSeems like a publicity stunt. The scammer's email reads quite unauthentically - like someone was contracted out to run this campaign. "After selling this gift card, we can earn approximately $50, which is three weeks income for one family." ...yeah, hard to believe this message was written organically. Use a few soundbites like these, get some articles published mentioning a counter-movement to leave 5-star reviews. Smart business.
- gnicholas 4y agoAs a skeptic, this thought crossed my mind as well. But if you were trying to make your business look more sympathetic, the initial ask would be for more money. No one would fault you for not sending $2,000, whereas some might say $75 is like a small donation.
- quadrifoliate 4y agoEh, they have a sob story about potentially being exploited again all ready. Plus, $75 in some sense is more shocking than $2,000 – you can perhaps visualize paying $75 to get rid of some negative reviews, and that combined with the lurid "this is three weeks income for poor people" catches your imagination. I am on board with the parent comment, this sounds like a publicity stunt.
- gnicholas 4y agoIf it starts happening to a bunch of companies whose founders frequent HN, we'll know it's a contagious publicity stunt!
- wesleywt 4y agoSorry. That looks like a typical scammers email. They are not authentically written.
- hm10 4y agoThere are a couple of other sentences as well that stood out to me. The overall apologetic tone, language, and phrases used in the email have some subtleties that are hard to imagine being used by a native Indian speaker, or by someone raised in India. It starts making more sense if you re-read it applying a western lens, i.e., how a westerner would imagine an Indian scammer to write, without being exposed to the nuances you find in regular Indian communication. What I'm trying to say is that if you're a native speaker of any Indian language, it is not difficult to see if a sentence originated by "thinking" in English vs in the native language: "no other choice" "the fact is" "no other way to survive" "we are begging you" Here's the full text of the spammer's email: > Hello. Unfortunately, negative feedback about your establishment has been left by us. And will appear in the future, one review a day. We sincerely apologize for our actions, and would not want to harm your business, but we have no other choice. The fact is that we live in India and see no other way to survive. We are begging you to send us google play gift card worth $75 You can buy the card directly from PayPal paypal.com/us/gifts/brands/google-play Or in any store selling gift cards We hope that this amount will not be critical for you. After selling this gift card we can earn approximately $50, which is three weeks of income for one family Please send the code to the email address vict2665@proton.me and we will immediately stop leaving negative feedback and remove the existing ones. Once again, we apologize.
- crikeyjoe 4y ago
- jmarneweck 4y agohttps://archive.vn/2Bpk0 https://archive.vn/2Bpk0
- exabrial 4y agoTo me, Review services need to be regulated like a credit bureau. Google, Yelp, Facebook, etc must: * obtain opt-in consent from the person or business being reviewed * they must have a dispute resolution process * they must have a call-center with real live people to field complaints The silicon valley business model of "absolutely 0 support offered" needs to die.
- Guest42 4y agoIt's illegal. The executives can't do that as they are bound by fiduciary duty. /s
- comrh 4y agoso if you run a shitty business or a scam you just don't opt in?
- yoz-y 4y agoYou could do that. However these days if I’m looking at reviews to choose to go somewhere then no reviews is as good as 0/5.
- mikelward 4y agoOpt-in? That would make it substantially less useful, and would favour incumbent review sites/services.
- pyrale 4y agoYes, scraping and selling data about people and small businesses and finding the sketchiest ways to monetize that without any recourse should probably be illegal. And if it favors incumbent sites and services, so be it. On a side note, Google, Yelp or FB aren't small dogs going against the incumbent. They are the incumbent, and that's the sole reason they can get these things going with so little effort.
- gnicholas 4y agoI've wondered about the opt-in consent piece because realtors seem to have kept themselves from being reviewed on Yelp. I have some mighty complaints about a couple that we've dealt with, who either misled or straight out lied. I know other people have had similar troubles, and I wish there were reviews of realtors on Yelp. But I'm not going to create a page for a realtor and submit a review because that would make me the target of his/her company.
- wiseleo 4y agoThis is a global problem. San Francisco has also been hit.
- reaperducer 4y agoSan Francisco has also been hit. As noted in the article.
- Anthony-G 4y ago“Blackmail” refers to the threat of revealing information that is damaging or embarrassing to the target. I used to think that it referred to information that is factually true as this was the only context in which I’d heard the term used. I only recently learned that the “information” does not necessarily have to be true, i.e., it’s still considered to be blackmail in cases like this where the perpetrator simply makes up bad reviews.
- everybodyknows 4y ago"Extortion" might be the better word choice. https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=extortion https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=extortion
- IshKebab 4y ago> To extort money or favors from (a person) by exciting fears of injury other than bodily harm, such as injury to reputation, distress of mind, false accusation, etc.
- Beltalowda 4y agoRelated anecdote: a friend of mine left a 1-star review for a restaurant a few months back; I was there, and it was definitely worthy of a 1-star review. It doesn't show on the Google reviews for me. He sees it, I don't. Another friend left a 1-star review as well, and that one does show (and he also doesn't see the "hidden" 1-star review). I don't know what's going on here, but it was a genuine reasonably written review detailing the problems we had. He never received any notification it was removed: just got kind of "shadow banned" or something.
- jahnu 4y agoHave they left plenty of reviews elsewhere? I wouldn’t be surprised if you have to reach some threshold of reviewing before your score counts.
- probably_wrong 4y agoI have left exactly one review in Google in my entire life, and it was a 1-star review of a car rental place that royally screwed up. A couple months later I was notified that "x users found this review helpful". So someone must have seen it despite me never reviewing anything else.
- spoonjim 4y agoThose interactions from other users can be totally fake to boost engagement.
- masklinn 4y agoPossible, but it could also be that the reviewing system considers them a high-signal user: very few reviews most/all negative would be a person who doesn’t care for reviewing but had such horrendous experience they were pushed to warn others.
- hgomersall 4y ago
- more_corn 4y agoWhy do people post paywalled articles? Seriously I’m not subscribing to some bullshit newspaper out of Houston. If they don’t want to let me read it I don’t want to read it. Just. Ignore. Paywalls. We have plenty of open information. Let the closed stuff stagnate and die.
- tgv 4y agoJournalism needs to be paid for. The open information you want is often unreliable, unverified and amateur. Yes, of course you can point to the vlogs of Sabine Hossenfelder, but she won't tell you about the problems with review sites or the tensions in German politics over Ukraine, nor tell you about the James Webb telescope in easy words, nor review the latest Marvel movie. You know who will tell you that for free? Breitbart (). And why? Because someone else pays them to push an agenda. Don't be their enabler. () Breitbart is just one example. An ugly one, though.
- erik_seaberg 4y agoThere are thousands of separate paywalls out there, so if the HN front page is full of paywalled links, most of us won’t be able to read any of them. This might make sense if there were a tech wire service we agreed on using.
- tgv 4y agoYou have a point. Perhaps there should be a rule that paywalled links can only be submitted with a (user-written) summary? Does take away a bit from the paper's income, though.
- pbhjpbhj 4y agoOften the papers are doing the same, they're taking the information from a third-party that actually did the journalism. Yes, there's value in aggregation, which is why tech news sites mostly just use Reddit to harvest stories from a week or so after they appear. IMO that's very low value. If the "news" sites wanted to encourage reward for sources they could start by attributing every story and indicating who they paid and the originator of the factual data. Truly though most of them would seemingly rather we paid them whilst they just regurgitate a social news site.
- noasaservice 4y agoThat seems like a really dumb solution, but Google is already getting wifi and location data. Why not stipulate that you need to have been in that, say county, to make a review? Yes I'm aware of GPS spoofing. It raises the bar for doing extortion attacks like that. Amrit the Dalit scammer who lives in Delhi has NO business in anything in Effingham IL... Unless they've been there. It would make this sort of stuff harder to do. Not impossible.
- erfgh 4y agoYou are assuming that everyone has a smartphone, everyone has it with them at all times and everyone consents to said smartphone sending their location data to the internet.
- pbhjpbhj 4y agoI'd be surprised if that's not true of the overwhelming number of people who post reviews on Google. I've posted several reviews in my home town, Google knows it's my home town from their maps data, that's a strong trust signal that Google could find a way to use to provide improved reviews. Google can probably tell if reviewers logged on to the restaurants wi-fi, that's a strong trust signal too -- Google could expose a trust status and still hide that they're essentially tracking our every move.
- noasaservice 4y agoExactly. I could see it as "Verified visitor" for the various things that could indicate a real visit. Or some businesses use Stripe for payments, and they send me emails. Again, google sniffs all emails. This could be used to corroborate usage. Again, they could be faked, with things like GPS spoofing, and using Wigle to determine local wifi there to fake that. But again, each step there significantly raises the bar of fraudulent activity.
- collaborative 4y agoFake reviews are in. In a world with billions of extremely poor people, fake reviews provide an income Part of our global community. Inevitably, reviews will end up being worthless
- _hcuq 4y agoI never post negative reviews. If a place is really good I will give it a positive review, otherwise nothing. It is too easy to be a critic on the internet.
- richrichardsson 4y agoI'm also mostly in this camp, except when something particularly egregious occurs. In that case I'll try to be as reasonable as possible and avoid all hyperbole when describing the problems; to that end I won't post the review at the immediate time so as to avoid judgement being clouded by passion.
- TheGigaChad 4y ago
- jaclaz 4y agoLoosely related thread (yesterday): Does the internet have a 1 star review problem? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32052666 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32052666
- 6510 4y agoWe are progressing towards a ban on a sub set of reviews. We can for example require evidence that one actually purchased a product or service and we may group those reviews by price. If I remember correctly EU websites already require evidence the reviews are left by real people. I didn't see anything about disposing of bad reviews. I do think the way we read reviews can be unproductive. Say there is a cockroach in your soup. An independent investigator wont necessarily discover how it got there. Would you still want to eat there? What if I hire 3 people to put a cockroach in their own soup 3? Wouldn't that produce a strong signal to avoid my competitor?
- FunnyBadger 4y agoWell I'd wonder if you informed Google, etc. review services that you got a blackmail threat to do this, could you then sue the review service provider if they did nothing about it? I think you'd have a case. I'll have to talk to my lawyer about that.