9 ms·

We got a takedown notice from LifeShield for our positive review

225 points by adulau 14y ago

brockf 14y ago
It's funny in a discussion of ethics to end with a sidenote about how the author wasn't making any money off paid referrals from his (inflated?) positive review of the system.
- drewcrawford 14y ago
  Is there anything in his post that would suggest the review is inflated? The nature of their referral system [0] is that it's opt-in, not like an Amazon affiliate link, so he's certainly not hiding his interest. [0] http://www.pskl.us/wp/?p=353 http://www.pskl.us/wp/?p=353
- Geewhipped 14y ago
  I can see how you'd think that, but I thought it should be included (because it lends more to the story of how they are being shady). The way I see it, we entered into an agreement with the referral program. They didn't honor their side of it. That's unethical. As for the review itself, I made it very, very clear that my links were referral links. I also made it clear that I was benefiting from the referrals (this was true of both of the referral programs). People could choose to believe that I was being honest or choose to believe that I was a shill. No trickery involved.
  - brockf 14y ago
    I do appreciate that. It's just that I, as a rule of thumb, take reviews from stakeholders with a grain of salt.
    - Geewhipped 14y ago
      As do I :)
- hluska 14y ago
  I have a question... Doesn't this (without a disclosure) violate the FTC's new rules about endorsements/testimonials in advertising?
wheaties 14y ago
Wow, I had no idea that you could pay someone to put in bogus links to a competitor in order to cause Google to penalize their page ranking. That's pretty shady but is it a "all is fair in love and war" type thing or is someone going to do something about this? I can totally see an organization pressuring people for pay-offs to "protect" them from certain sites. Is this already happening?
- Rudism 14y ago
  It's called "negative seo" and it does appear to be an effective way to blast people out of Google's top results. Here's a comment I found from someone else who's experienced this: http://www.seobook.com/negative-seo-outing#45906 http://www.seobook.com/negative-seo-outing#45906
  - nhebb 14y ago
    For more on the subject, SEOmoz did a Whiteboard Friday on negative SEO a few weeks ago: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/negative-seo-myths-realities-and-precautions-whiteboard-friday http://www.seomoz.org/blog/negative-seo-myths-realities-and-...
    - joshcrews 14y ago
      I'm reading the transcript of the video and he talks about a form of attack where fake emails are sent from spoofy addresses demanding positive review takedowns and making legal threats. I wonder if that's a possible explanation of the life shield email he got. In the seomoz article find "It's even more terrifying, but they sent fake emails" to get to the relevant part.
- Jem 14y ago
  Google has always denied that this is possible. The recent coverage on negative SEO seems to show otherwise.
  - iamben 14y ago
    Indeed. AFAIK, Google made some subtle changes to their guidelines that say otherwise - link: http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/negative-seo/ http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/negative-seo/
veverkap 14y ago
Does the white font on black background mixed with the opposite style in the quotes hurt anyone else's eyes? I'm seeing ghosts now.
- ars 14y ago
  No, that's my preferred kind of text. It's a relief to read a site like that, most aren't so kind to my eyes. The reverse colors of quotes is very easy to understand (although if it was me I would have used white text with a slightly gray background and a white border). If you are seeing ghosts your monitor may be too bright for the amount of light in the room around you.
- andyzweb 14y ago
  you are not alone
- lucian1900 14y ago
  Indeed, it should've been all white on black.
- Geewhipped 14y ago
  Sorry about that, we've been meaning to update the look of pskl.us for quite a while and we just haven't gotten around to it.
- antoko 14y ago
  its absolutely hideous and unreadable to me for any length of time - Salon.com recently did something similar on a redesign of their site. I go there much less now.
nicksergeant 14y ago
LifeShield is a horrible company. They've been a horrible company ever since their name changed from "InGrid". I originally purchased my system when they were InGrid about 6 years ago. When I bought my system, it was advertised that the system would work with or without monitoring, which was a huge selling point for me. I wasn't sure if I really cared about the monitoring or not, since alerts go directly to your phone, email, etc. With those kinds of alerts, who needs someone else to call the cops for you? Anyway, so I invested in the system mostly for this reason. The InGrid site was great and the support staff was friendly and helpful - I always ended up talking to the same person and it was a nice experience. So I dumped a good $600 into sensors, cameras, etc. Fast-forward a few years and InGrid changes their name to LifeShield - I don't know if this was an acquisition or a brand change or what, but it brought on a slew of bad experiences. The support staff started sounding cold and uninterested. The website started going to shit, it was impossible to find things (try finding the online control panel to your system - that thing has changed URLs / names at least 5 times). But the two worst things: a few months ago, they raised my monitoring rates with no notification whatsoever. I saw my monthly charge come in $5 higher than it used to be. Obviously not a ton of money but I'd like to know why I'm paying $60 more per year for the exact same service. I called them up and they said "Well our rates are now different for those who aren't on a contract with us. If you'd like to go back to your normal rate, you'll need to sign a 3-year contract with us." What, The, Fuck. I don't want a contract, especially not with a company who randomly decides to raise rates of their longest customers without notification. So I decided to shut off the system monitoring. When I did so, to my horror I found that the entire system was bricked. The control panel says "Not Activated". They've once again fucked me, going back on their original statement that the hardware would work without monitoring. So I'm done with them. They're a shitty company who's gone down the toilet over the past few years. From the article here one of the LifeShield reps said they took a huge hit to their business because of some random clone on the web... that's probably bullshit. They're taking a huge hit to their business because of their shady business practices and lackluster product offerings.
- nicksergeant 14y ago
  To add to LifeShield's shady practices, it looks like most of their Twitter followers are spam accounts that they've created to boost their followers: https://twitter.com/#!/lshomesecurity/followers https://twitter.com/#!/lshomesecurity/followers Every follower has no bio, around 10-15 "follows" and about 1,500-1,800 followers. All generic photos, generic usernames, names, etc. What a fucking joke this company is.
AznHisoka 14y ago
A commenter already mention this. Lots of companies got hit really hard from the Penguin update because of bad links pointing to them. So I'm not surprised they're being overly aggressive about this. Speaking of the Penguin update, I'm surprised and quite disappointed it hasn't been talked about in HN. It affects a lot of consumer web startups. Anyone who has a website basically should be concerned.
- TomGullen 14y ago
  I'm not concerned, I'm happy. Google are penalising junk websites.
  - AznHisoka 14y ago
    Yes, and in the process also taking out innocent websites as well. This isn't an algorithm update against "bad" websites. It's an algorithm update that negatively affects websites that fit a certain pattern - and you can fit that pattern without even being shady. For example, if someone doing negative SEO by blasting 10,000 bad, spammy links pointing to your website - the penguin update penalizes your site. Even if your site is about helping cancer patients, or feeding Africa.
  - nicksergeant 14y ago
    No, anyone can create a "junk website" and point a bunch of links to your legitimate website and get you docked. That should be concerning to you.
monochromatic 14y ago
> When I originally wrote my reviews of the LifeShield products and services (March, 2010), they had a referral system in place. If I got 5 referrals, I’d get free security system monitoring for life. They provided a link to give to possible customers. I used it all over my reviews. I don't understand how you can complain about unethical business practices in the same post that you admit to this.
- dangrossman 14y ago
  "Admit to this" as if sales commissions are something shady? > I made it very, very clear that my links were referral links. I also made it clear that I was benefiting from the referrals (this was true of both of the referral programs). People could choose to believe that I was being honest or choose to believe that I was a shill. No trickery involved.
  - monochromatic 14y ago
    Affiliate links and supposedly objective reviews do not mix well.
  - droithomme 14y ago
    It's interesting but mysterious that you would bring up sales commissions here as that is a very different scenario. (A) I go to the Ford dealer to buy a truck. The salesman, Frank, is on commission. He tells me that Fords are the best trucks and when I ask about Dodge, he says their trucks are badly designed, dangerous, and lack power. (B) I then go to the Dodge dealer to buy a truck. The salesman, Don, is on commission. He tells me that Dodges are the best trucks and when I ask about Ford, he says their trucks are badly designed, dangerous, and lack power. (C) I then check in with someone who is a truck expert, Tom. He points out that one of the brands is much better than the other based on his personal experiences. What is the difference between A, B and C? Are one's expectations about the objectivity of the data different between an interaction with Frank and Don who are clearly identified themselves as professional sales agents whose primary vocation is profiting from each sale that they negotiate with a customer? What are the expectations here and how are they different with a customer getting information from an independent reviewer versus a salesperson who is known not to be an impartial and independent reviewer? What would the response be of most people, after buying Brand T of truck, and finding it to be a lemon, to discovering that impartial expert Tom was actually receiving commissions or free products from the company or companies whose products he recommended? What I am saying here is not mysterious or bizarre feats of stretching reasoning to its limits, but just absolute common sense that everyone is familiar with. People know that a salesman working professionally at a car dealer is not an unbiased source of information. No one is completely shocked when it turns out he exaggerated or flat out lied to get his commission, for unethical behavior for profit is common in the sales avocation. This is why people turn to independent, impartial reviewers, and expect them to have actual experience with the product, to voice their true opinion, and not to be receiving kickbacks, presents, or special considerations from the company's whose products they review.
Jem 14y ago
I've seen it mentioned in the Terms of Use of certain companies (thinking Fox.com) that people are not allowed to link to the company website going back to the 90s, but I've never actually seen anyone try to enforce that. I don't know whether I find it scary or hilarious. eta: the Fox terms haven't changed much: "If you are interested in creating hypertext links to the Site, you must contact Company at terms@fox.com before doing so."
- DanBC 14y ago
  There have been some UK cases about embedding other people's content in frames and deep linking. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_linking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_linking)
karnajani 14y ago
I understand that LifeShield may not be a popular company, and that their rep was totally in the wrong in this matter. But the level of outrage shown by Jeremy is just ludicrous. They apologized several times over and explained that they were dealing with cranking out a job under extremely tight deadlines (something we should all be familiar with) and managed to screw up. The 4-5 instances of apologies, retraction of threat, and admittance of error should have been enough. But it seems like OP felt so entitled to being treated like a 5-star customer that he had to complain till he was spent.
- Quizzy 14y ago
  It was not about the apologies but about the business practices that continued unabated. What good is apologizing for beating someone on the head if you continue to kick him in the shins?
- Geewhipped 14y ago
  Sorry if I didn't make this clear in the blog post, but the part I'm most upset about is not that I got the takedown notices... it's that they are using bogus takedown notices at all. Read the emails between me and the "SVP Interactive" at LifeShield and also with the rep from the IP Protection company (who admits that I'm right, the takedowns are bogus). I'm not whining about being inconvenienced. Oh, and it isn't that they "managed to screw up" ... they completely own up to what they've done (and continue to do). They know it's wrong, but decided to keep doing it because it was getting results. All this was covered in the blog post. Also, I'm nowhere near spent.
  - DanBC 14y ago
    Why don't you just copy the EFF into your emails? (https://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers/legal/liability/IP https://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers/legal/liability/IP)
    - Geewhipped 14y ago
      We did submit the text of the takedown notice to chillingeffects.org fwiw
RyanMcGreal 14y ago
I'm a little bit concerned about the moral hazard of a reviewer who can earn money from referrals after posting a product review.
- wpietri 14y ago
  Yes. There's good reason that actual journalists don't take money from review subjects.
rwhitman 14y ago
Based on the fact that his review was using a referral link (mentioned at the end) I wouldn't be surprised the 700k "bad links" were probably doing the same for similar reasons. Google likely regarded most of their backlinks as affiliate spam. This sounds fishy from every angle
Tichy 14y ago
To me the scary part is that links might be unwanted because of search engine penalties. Since social connections probably factor into those, you can become a pariah rather quickly - nobody wants your links, and nobody will link to you -> vicious circle.
kabdib 14y ago
The home security industry is, in general, horribly manipulative. They make money on fear and customer lock-in (subscriptions). As such there appears to be little pressure to adopt advances in tech, to cost-reduce, or to make things easy and friendy for end-users. The systems are complex and baroque, and there is a reason for it. There's probably room for disruption here. I imagine a lot of the roadblocks to this will be regulatory, such as if you integrate fire alarm systems or devices that are hooked to phone lines. The two weekends I spent wiping, reverse-engineering and reconfiguring an old ADT installation really made me want to design boards and write firmware again.
- larrys 14y ago
  "probably room for disruption here. I imagine a lot of the roadblocks to this will be regulatory" Sensors --> Control Panel --> App|Txt Message An opportunity for sure. I own two of these Elk Gold Panels: http://www.elkproducts.com/product-catalog/m1-gold-cross-platform-control http://www.elkproducts.com/product-catalog/m1-gold-cross-pla... Complete with http://www.ekeypad.net/eK_Family/Applications.html http://www.ekeypad.net/eK_Family/Applications.html software you can essentially cut out the online monitoring and phone lines and simply do everything over the internet. So I don't pay anything for monitoring. You could actually easily write your own software since the M1 spits out codes in real time and responds to commands that you can send over ssh. Anyway the way I have this setup I can be notified of any event (say even someone walks into and trips a motion sensor) by an email or text message. You could even do a phone call or notify multiple people. And you can remotely turn on and turn off zones, the system, and fully program this to do just about anything. There isn't anything magical Elk is doing. And I've spoken to their top tech guy and he didn't even know how to troubleshoot an SMTP problem. I would imagine a good kickstarter project could easily duplicate the same hardware functionality. The security vendor of course pushed the monitoring. I have some experience in that business so I didn't feel that I needed a central station. I just wanted to be notified. You can easily integrate any types of controllers with this (like an X10) and video cameras etc. Bottom line: There are tons of people with legacy alarm systems. Even just a hardware device that sat on the existing analog POTS line and sent the signals over the Internet to a place that would then send a txt message to a users phone would be a good place to start.
galenward 14y ago
Here's the likely real story: LifeShield bought tens of thousands of links to improve their SEO (made sense on a 6-basis, less sense on a 2-3 year basis) and got hit hard by a recent update. I helped a company a few years ago that had paid a consultant to purchase tens of thousands of links. The way they did it was by buying one of three slots on a few different freely-downloadable wordpress and forum themes. The problem with buying links like this is that once they're purchased, they are out of your control (buying links is pretty much always a bad idea, but 10x more so like this). Yes, competitors could have bought tens of thousands of links, but let's apply Occam's Razor here: - Did an angry competitor spends a ton of money on the off chance that they can swamp LifeShield an SEO penalty (risky - could go the other way) OR - Did a company that has purchased tons of spammy Twitter followers (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3970998 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3970998) and pay referral fees to people who review their products (and link to them) also buy tons of spammy links?
- Geewhipped 14y ago
  Thank you for being the one to toss this out there... I also feel this is a strong possibility but I didn't want to be the one to say it.
droithomme 14y ago
It was an interesting article until near the end when the author dropped that he was angry because this other company wasn't paying him referral fees they promised in exchange for his good reviews of their product, which from some of the discussion here sounds like there is a consensus is bad products. This suggests that the reviewer was writing false reviews because doing so earned him money, and recasts the rest of the article into the category of "two con artists trying to out con each other".
- hughw 14y ago
  Exactly! I literally stopped reading right there.
- Geewhipped 14y ago
  See below: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3971061 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3971061 As it said in the post, the review existed when there was no referral program in place...I answered questions and helped current customers during this time because I like the product and I genuinely wanted the company to succeed. There was never a "promise in exchange for good reviews."
  - droithomme 14y ago
    Here you say "the review existed when there was no referral program in place" In your article you say, "reviews of the LifeShield products and services (March, 2010), they had a referral system in place. If I got 5 referrals, I’d get free security system monitoring for life. They provided a link to give to possible customers. I used it all over my reviews. I personally knew 3 parties that had purchased systems via my referral link, but I figured there were more that I didn’t know about..." The article clearly does not support the new claim that "the review existed when there was no referral program in place".
    - Geewhipped 14y ago
      You clearly have reading comprehension issues. From the blog post: "At that point, the referral system became useless to me so I removed the links and just left the review stand. I updated it from time to time and answered any questions people posted as comments or emailed to me. I was grateful for a product I really like and for the free monitoring."

225 points by adulau 14y ago

It's funny in a discussion of ethics to end with a sidenote about how the author wasn't making any money off paid referrals from his (inflated?) positive review of the system.

drewcrawford 14y ago
Is there anything in his post that would suggest the review is inflated? The nature of their referral system [0] is that it's opt-in, not like an Amazon affiliate link, so he's certainly not hiding his interest. [0] http://www.pskl.us/wp/?p=353 http://www.pskl.us/wp/?p=353
Geewhipped 14y ago
I can see how you'd think that, but I thought it should be included (because it lends more to the story of how they are being shady). The way I see it, we entered into an agreement with the referral program. They didn't honor their side of it. That's unethical. As for the review itself, I made it very, very clear that my links were referral links. I also made it clear that I was benefiting from the referrals (this was true of both of the referral programs). People could choose to believe that I was being honest or choose to believe that I was a shill. No trickery involved.
- brockf 14y ago
  I do appreciate that. It's just that I, as a rule of thumb, take reviews from stakeholders with a grain of salt.
  - Geewhipped 14y ago
    As do I :)
hluska 14y ago
I have a question... Doesn't this (without a disclosure) violate the FTC's new rules about endorsements/testimonials in advertising?

wheaties 14y ago

Wow, I had no idea that you could pay someone to put in bogus links to a competitor in order to cause Google to penalize their page ranking. That's pretty shady but is it a "all is fair in love and war" type thing or is someone going to do something about this? I can totally see an organization pressuring people for pay-offs to "protect" them from certain sites. Is this already happening?

Rudism 14y ago
It's called "negative seo" and it does appear to be an effective way to blast people out of Google's top results. Here's a comment I found from someone else who's experienced this: http://www.seobook.com/negative-seo-outing#45906 http://www.seobook.com/negative-seo-outing#45906
- nhebb 14y ago
  For more on the subject, SEOmoz did a Whiteboard Friday on negative SEO a few weeks ago: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/negative-seo-myths-realities-and-precautions-whiteboard-friday http://www.seomoz.org/blog/negative-seo-myths-realities-and-...
  - joshcrews 14y ago
    I'm reading the transcript of the video and he talks about a form of attack where fake emails are sent from spoofy addresses demanding positive review takedowns and making legal threats. I wonder if that's a possible explanation of the life shield email he got. In the seomoz article find "It's even more terrifying, but they sent fake emails" to get to the relevant part.
Jem 14y ago
Google has always denied that this is possible. The recent coverage on negative SEO seems to show otherwise.
- iamben 14y ago
  Indeed. AFAIK, Google made some subtle changes to their guidelines that say otherwise - link: http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/negative-seo/ http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/negative-seo/

veverkap 14y ago

Does the white font on black background mixed with the opposite style in the quotes hurt anyone else's eyes? I'm seeing ghosts now.

ars 14y ago
No, that's my preferred kind of text. It's a relief to read a site like that, most aren't so kind to my eyes. The reverse colors of quotes is very easy to understand (although if it was me I would have used white text with a slightly gray background and a white border). If you are seeing ghosts your monitor may be too bright for the amount of light in the room around you.
andyzweb 14y ago
you are not alone
lucian1900 14y ago
Indeed, it should've been all white on black.
Geewhipped 14y ago
Sorry about that, we've been meaning to update the look of pskl.us for quite a while and we just haven't gotten around to it.
antoko 14y ago
its absolutely hideous and unreadable to me for any length of time - Salon.com recently did something similar on a redesign of their site. I go there much less now.

nicksergeant 14y ago

LifeShield is a horrible company. They've been a horrible company ever since their name changed from "InGrid". I originally purchased my system when they were InGrid about 6 years ago. When I bought my system, it was advertised that the system would work with or without monitoring, which was a huge selling point for me. I wasn't sure if I really cared about the monitoring or not, since alerts go directly to your phone, email, etc. With those kinds of alerts, who needs someone else to call the cops for you? Anyway, so I invested in the system mostly for this reason. The InGrid site was great and the support staff was friendly and helpful - I always ended up talking to the same person and it was a nice experience. So I dumped a good $600 into sensors, cameras, etc. Fast-forward a few years and InGrid changes their name to LifeShield - I don't know if this was an acquisition or a brand change or what, but it brought on a slew of bad experiences. The support staff started sounding cold and uninterested. The website started going to shit, it was impossible to find things (try finding the online control panel to your system - that thing has changed URLs / names at least 5 times). But the two worst things: a few months ago, they raised my monitoring rates with no notification whatsoever. I saw my monthly charge come in $5 higher than it used to be. Obviously not a ton of money but I'd like to know why I'm paying $60 more per year for the exact same service. I called them up and they said "Well our rates are now different for those who aren't on a contract with us. If you'd like to go back to your normal rate, you'll need to sign a 3-year contract with us." What, The, Fuck. I don't want a contract, especially not with a company who randomly decides to raise rates of their longest customers without notification. So I decided to shut off the system monitoring. When I did so, to my horror I found that the entire system was bricked. The control panel says "Not Activated". They've once again fucked me, going back on their original statement that the hardware would work without monitoring. So I'm done with them. They're a shitty company who's gone down the toilet over the past few years. From the article here one of the LifeShield reps said they took a huge hit to their business because of some random clone on the web... that's probably bullshit. They're taking a huge hit to their business because of their shady business practices and lackluster product offerings.

nicksergeant 14y ago
To add to LifeShield's shady practices, it looks like most of their Twitter followers are spam accounts that they've created to boost their followers: https://twitter.com/#!/lshomesecurity/followers https://twitter.com/#!/lshomesecurity/followers Every follower has no bio, around 10-15 "follows" and about 1,500-1,800 followers. All generic photos, generic usernames, names, etc. What a fucking joke this company is.

AznHisoka 14y ago

A commenter already mention this. Lots of companies got hit really hard from the Penguin update because of bad links pointing to them. So I'm not surprised they're being overly aggressive about this. Speaking of the Penguin update, I'm surprised and quite disappointed it hasn't been talked about in HN. It affects a lot of consumer web startups. Anyone who has a website basically should be concerned.

TomGullen 14y ago
I'm not concerned, I'm happy. Google are penalising junk websites.
- AznHisoka 14y ago
  Yes, and in the process also taking out innocent websites as well. This isn't an algorithm update against "bad" websites. It's an algorithm update that negatively affects websites that fit a certain pattern - and you can fit that pattern without even being shady. For example, if someone doing negative SEO by blasting 10,000 bad, spammy links pointing to your website - the penguin update penalizes your site. Even if your site is about helping cancer patients, or feeding Africa.
- nicksergeant 14y ago
  No, anyone can create a "junk website" and point a bunch of links to your legitimate website and get you docked. That should be concerning to you.

monochromatic 14y ago

> When I originally wrote my reviews of the LifeShield products and services (March, 2010), they had a referral system in place. If I got 5 referrals, I’d get free security system monitoring for life. They provided a link to give to possible customers. I used it all over my reviews. I don't understand how you can complain about unethical business practices in the same post that you admit to this.

dangrossman 14y ago
"Admit to this" as if sales commissions are something shady? > I made it very, very clear that my links were referral links. I also made it clear that I was benefiting from the referrals (this was true of both of the referral programs). People could choose to believe that I was being honest or choose to believe that I was a shill. No trickery involved.
- monochromatic 14y ago
  Affiliate links and supposedly objective reviews do not mix well.
- droithomme 14y ago
  It's interesting but mysterious that you would bring up sales commissions here as that is a very different scenario. (A) I go to the Ford dealer to buy a truck. The salesman, Frank, is on commission. He tells me that Fords are the best trucks and when I ask about Dodge, he says their trucks are badly designed, dangerous, and lack power. (B) I then go to the Dodge dealer to buy a truck. The salesman, Don, is on commission. He tells me that Dodges are the best trucks and when I ask about Ford, he says their trucks are badly designed, dangerous, and lack power. (C) I then check in with someone who is a truck expert, Tom. He points out that one of the brands is much better than the other based on his personal experiences. What is the difference between A, B and C? Are one's expectations about the objectivity of the data different between an interaction with Frank and Don who are clearly identified themselves as professional sales agents whose primary vocation is profiting from each sale that they negotiate with a customer? What are the expectations here and how are they different with a customer getting information from an independent reviewer versus a salesperson who is known not to be an impartial and independent reviewer? What would the response be of most people, after buying Brand T of truck, and finding it to be a lemon, to discovering that impartial expert Tom was actually receiving commissions or free products from the company or companies whose products he recommended? What I am saying here is not mysterious or bizarre feats of stretching reasoning to its limits, but just absolute common sense that everyone is familiar with. People know that a salesman working professionally at a car dealer is not an unbiased source of information. No one is completely shocked when it turns out he exaggerated or flat out lied to get his commission, for unethical behavior for profit is common in the sales avocation. This is why people turn to independent, impartial reviewers, and expect them to have actual experience with the product, to voice their true opinion, and not to be receiving kickbacks, presents, or special considerations from the company's whose products they review.

Jem 14y ago

I've seen it mentioned in the Terms of Use of certain companies (thinking Fox.com) that people are not allowed to link to the company website going back to the 90s, but I've never actually seen anyone try to enforce that. I don't know whether I find it scary or hilarious. eta: the Fox terms haven't changed much: "If you are interested in creating hypertext links to the Site, you must contact Company at terms@fox.com before doing so."

DanBC 14y ago
There have been some UK cases about embedding other people's content in frames and deep linking. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_linking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_linking)

karnajani 14y ago

I understand that LifeShield may not be a popular company, and that their rep was totally in the wrong in this matter. But the level of outrage shown by Jeremy is just ludicrous. They apologized several times over and explained that they were dealing with cranking out a job under extremely tight deadlines (something we should all be familiar with) and managed to screw up. The 4-5 instances of apologies, retraction of threat, and admittance of error should have been enough. But it seems like OP felt so entitled to being treated like a 5-star customer that he had to complain till he was spent.

Quizzy 14y ago
It was not about the apologies but about the business practices that continued unabated. What good is apologizing for beating someone on the head if you continue to kick him in the shins?
Geewhipped 14y ago
Sorry if I didn't make this clear in the blog post, but the part I'm most upset about is not that I got the takedown notices... it's that they are using bogus takedown notices at all. Read the emails between me and the "SVP Interactive" at LifeShield and also with the rep from the IP Protection company (who admits that I'm right, the takedowns are bogus). I'm not whining about being inconvenienced. Oh, and it isn't that they "managed to screw up" ... they completely own up to what they've done (and continue to do). They know it's wrong, but decided to keep doing it because it was getting results. All this was covered in the blog post. Also, I'm nowhere near spent.
- DanBC 14y ago
  Why don't you just copy the EFF into your emails? (https://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers/legal/liability/IP https://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers/legal/liability/IP)
  - Geewhipped 14y ago
    We did submit the text of the takedown notice to chillingeffects.org fwiw

RyanMcGreal 14y ago

I'm a little bit concerned about the moral hazard of a reviewer who can earn money from referrals after posting a product review.

wpietri 14y ago
Yes. There's good reason that actual journalists don't take money from review subjects.

rwhitman 14y ago

Based on the fact that his review was using a referral link (mentioned at the end) I wouldn't be surprised the 700k "bad links" were probably doing the same for similar reasons. Google likely regarded most of their backlinks as affiliate spam. This sounds fishy from every angle

Tichy 14y ago

To me the scary part is that links might be unwanted because of search engine penalties. Since social connections probably factor into those, you can become a pariah rather quickly - nobody wants your links, and nobody will link to you -> vicious circle.

kabdib 14y ago

The home security industry is, in general, horribly manipulative. They make money on fear and customer lock-in (subscriptions). As such there appears to be little pressure to adopt advances in tech, to cost-reduce, or to make things easy and friendy for end-users. The systems are complex and baroque, and there is a reason for it. There's probably room for disruption here. I imagine a lot of the roadblocks to this will be regulatory, such as if you integrate fire alarm systems or devices that are hooked to phone lines. The two weekends I spent wiping, reverse-engineering and reconfiguring an old ADT installation really made me want to design boards and write firmware again.

larrys 14y ago
"probably room for disruption here. I imagine a lot of the roadblocks to this will be regulatory" Sensors --> Control Panel --> App|Txt Message An opportunity for sure. I own two of these Elk Gold Panels: http://www.elkproducts.com/product-catalog/m1-gold-cross-platform-control http://www.elkproducts.com/product-catalog/m1-gold-cross-pla... Complete with http://www.ekeypad.net/eK_Family/Applications.html http://www.ekeypad.net/eK_Family/Applications.html software you can essentially cut out the online monitoring and phone lines and simply do everything over the internet. So I don't pay anything for monitoring. You could actually easily write your own software since the M1 spits out codes in real time and responds to commands that you can send over ssh. Anyway the way I have this setup I can be notified of any event (say even someone walks into and trips a motion sensor) by an email or text message. You could even do a phone call or notify multiple people. And you can remotely turn on and turn off zones, the system, and fully program this to do just about anything. There isn't anything magical Elk is doing. And I've spoken to their top tech guy and he didn't even know how to troubleshoot an SMTP problem. I would imagine a good kickstarter project could easily duplicate the same hardware functionality. The security vendor of course pushed the monitoring. I have some experience in that business so I didn't feel that I needed a central station. I just wanted to be notified. You can easily integrate any types of controllers with this (like an X10) and video cameras etc. Bottom line: There are tons of people with legacy alarm systems. Even just a hardware device that sat on the existing analog POTS line and sent the signals over the Internet to a place that would then send a txt message to a users phone would be a good place to start.

galenward 14y ago

Here's the likely real story: LifeShield bought tens of thousands of links to improve their SEO (made sense on a 6-basis, less sense on a 2-3 year basis) and got hit hard by a recent update. I helped a company a few years ago that had paid a consultant to purchase tens of thousands of links. The way they did it was by buying one of three slots on a few different freely-downloadable wordpress and forum themes. The problem with buying links like this is that once they're purchased, they are out of your control (buying links is pretty much always a bad idea, but 10x more so like this). Yes, competitors could have bought tens of thousands of links, but let's apply Occam's Razor here: - Did an angry competitor spends a ton of money on the off chance that they can swamp LifeShield an SEO penalty (risky - could go the other way) OR - Did a company that has purchased tons of spammy Twitter followers (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3970998 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3970998) and pay referral fees to people who review their products (and link to them) also buy tons of spammy links?

Geewhipped 14y ago
Thank you for being the one to toss this out there... I also feel this is a strong possibility but I didn't want to be the one to say it.

droithomme 14y ago

It was an interesting article until near the end when the author dropped that he was angry because this other company wasn't paying him referral fees they promised in exchange for his good reviews of their product, which from some of the discussion here sounds like there is a consensus is bad products. This suggests that the reviewer was writing false reviews because doing so earned him money, and recasts the rest of the article into the category of "two con artists trying to out con each other".

hughw 14y ago
Exactly! I literally stopped reading right there.
Geewhipped 14y ago
See below: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3971061 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3971061 As it said in the post, the review existed when there was no referral program in place...I answered questions and helped current customers during this time because I like the product and I genuinely wanted the company to succeed. There was never a "promise in exchange for good reviews."
- droithomme 14y ago
  Here you say "the review existed when there was no referral program in place" In your article you say, "reviews of the LifeShield products and services (March, 2010), they had a referral system in place. If I got 5 referrals, I’d get free security system monitoring for life. They provided a link to give to possible customers. I used it all over my reviews. I personally knew 3 parties that had purchased systems via my referral link, but I figured there were more that I didn’t know about..." The article clearly does not support the new claim that "the review existed when there was no referral program in place".
  - Geewhipped 14y ago
    You clearly have reading comprehension issues. From the blog post: "At that point, the referral system became useless to me so I removed the links and just left the review stand. I updated it from time to time and answered any questions people posted as comments or emailed to me. I was grateful for a product I really like and for the free monitoring."