A Manhattan judge has ordered a lawyer to take down allegedly defamatory statements he posted on the Internet in response to negative reviews he believed had been written by a former client.

New York State Supreme Court Justice Cynthia Kern on Tuesday said lawyer Robert Feldman must take down the statements

In 2010, two negative reviews of Feldman were posted anonymously to a website, www.RipoffReport.com, which publishes consumer complaints against companies and individuals, according to the ruling. One of the comments, posted in July 2010 and still available on the website, called Feldman “the most unscrupulous lawyer.”

Feldman responded on www.RipoffReport.com to the comments in late 2011, saying they were authored by Glassman, whom he called “emotionally disturbed” and accused of “harassing and victimizing” several women, the ruling stated.

Full story from Reuters: Lawyer must remove allegedly defamatory comments from Web: court.

My comment: Fat chance. Ripoff Report does not remove comments and has defied other court orders in the past.

A Seattle attorney, who just happens to work for Microsoft, had his LinkedIn profile and online identity cloned by scammers, who then solicited donations for a fake charity from his connections and the public.

The criminals used the cloned LinkedIn profile, his name and his credentials (with a different picture) to reassure people of credibility when they advertised fake jobs, in an advance-fee employment scam. One woman apparently lost $4,500 to the scammers.

It’s all too easy for this to happen to almost anyone, as LinkedIn does not verify new accounts. Nor do they warn existing members that a new account has been created with duplicate or very similar information. Or with an identical picture.

More on the story, including a video interview with the frustrated victim, at Seattle local station, King 5 news.

[youtube width="560" height="315"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2mJyYABVCk[/youtube]

I caught this movie last week, mostly by accident. Despite the “white collar” in the title, the trailer and intro set it in the world of football (soccer) hooligans. However, as the official blurb below explains, the backdrop is the world of credit card fraud. More precisely: bank card cloning.

“Casual football hooligan Mike Jacobs is going nowhere in life when he meets old friend Eddie Hill at a football riot. Under Eddie’s tutelage he soon finds himself inducted into the world of credit card fraud, where organized gangs withdraw hundreds of thousands of pounds from cash machines every night. As Mike becomes seduced by the money and women that come with his new lifestyle, the dangers increase and he soon finds events spiraling beyond his control.”

The story that unfolds is how the main character, down on his luck, gets drawn into a world of gangsters, easy money, carding and cloning, violence etc. The clashes between the football supporters occur briefly early on and are not seen again.

There are several scenes showing the card cloning technology, the geeks who run the equipment and the small-scale manufacturing they do to equip the “teams” with bundles of freshly encoded cards, which are then used at ATMs in England and Paris to withdraw a few million in cash each week.

I don’t know if the numbers are based on reality for UK and European fraud. The amounts withdrawn seem absurdly high for one gang to be able to get away week after week. Neither are the scenes showing the fraudsters standing at ATMs inserting card after card and withdrawing hundreds of pounds and euros from each account. That unusual pattern alone would surely trigger major alerts in the system? Also not plausible is that none of them ever hide their faces, wear hats or seem to care that they are inches away from a video camera at each ATM.

Anyway it’s supposed to be entertainment and not a documentary, so I’ll still mark “The Rise & Fall of a White Collar Hooligan” as worth seeing. It is somewhat cliched and formulaic, but there are some nice twists and decent acting, along with suitably gritty settings.

More about the movie at their official Facebook page

I recently received an unsolicited LinkedIn connection request from a “Fernilia Willson” – who has the purported title of Marketing Manager for a California company called “readyBUZZ.”

A quick review of her LinkedIn profile (profile picture on the right) raised a number of red flags for lack of authenticity, so I started doing some background checking.

In case you were wondering, I don’t check all my LinkedIn connections in this manner, only the ones that set off the fake alert alarms.

The online trail led to a Google+ profile (profile picture on the left), where “Fernilia” is keeping busy posting frequent updates on social media topics, and connecting with 1200 random strangers. On LinkedIn her network just topped the 500 connections mark.

This all fairly quickly lead to the conclusion that “Fernilia Willson” is an invented persona – one that is being used to collect network connections on LinkedIn and Google+ for social media marketing (or other) purposes.

By “invented persona” I mean that there is no evidence that there is anyone with the name “Fernilia Willson”  in the United States. Nor can either of the profile pictures (which are not of the same person) being displayed on the two networks possibly be authentic, as both pictures have been scavenged off the internet and are of other women.

In other words,  Fernilia Willson of readyBuzz is a fake.

Update July 16 2012

Google completely removed the profile after an investigation. LinkedIn have it in the queue for deletion. Meanwhile this post has attracted quite a number of visitors and is ranking highly for both Fernilia Willson and readyBuzz in Google. readyBuzz seems to be silent on the matter.

I did mention earlier that I would provide additional evidence that pointed to the fakeness of the profile. The red flag was in the LinkedIn education section, which states:

University of California, San Francisco – School of Medicine
Master of Computer Applications (M.C.A.),Computer Science

Of course a school of medicine is not normally a place to obtain a Computer Science degree. More telling is that there is no “Master of Computer Applications” that I could find in the United States. Instead The Master of Computer Applications (MCA) is a Postgraduate degree in computer application Streams awarded in India, according to Wikipedia.

That blunder points to the profile having been created by someone in India who does not know the US education system, nor who had the ability to comprehend my detailed profile on LinkedIn.

If they had, they surely would not have tried to add me as a contact. Instead they have been exposed, deleted and caused readyBuzz to be seen as an amateurish, slightly fraudulent and clueless operation.

[youtube width="560" height="315"]http://youtu.be/7MBLThyD1nU[/youtube]

Google’s Matt Cutts outlines in straightforward terms what Google will, and mostly won’t do to remove entries from search results.  Cutts points out that Google’s aim is to “hold up a mirror to the web,” rather than trying to determine what is and isn’t valid, important or “true.”

Put another way: to remove entries from Google one must have them removed at the source. Once that is done the search engine will remove the entries (that appear in the search results) for the now deleted content. This is by no means a new Google policy, but it is useful to hear it plainly stated.

I’ll be adding my thoughts to this post in due course. Meanwhile your comments are welcome below.

Our search analytics show that the topics of a previous blog “Ripoff Report moves the ripoffreport.com website back to the United States” continues to be of interest.  As there are some changes to report on where the Ripoff Report website is hosted, it seems like a good time for an update.

Currently the Ripoff Report website is hosted on a server in a large data center belonging to Softlayer, in Dallas, TX.  That’s according to the information returned in a DNS lookup for the domain ripoffreport.com, which returns an IP address of 50.23.117.72.  The server still appears to be under the management of anti-scraping and web security vendor Distil, Inc. , who are hosting sites for other clients on the same server (or cluster of servers.)  The hosting move away from the Amazon cloud (see earlier blog) occurred some months ago and seems to have been made without noticeable disruption or downtime.

It should be noted that this kind of hosting move is fairly commonplace in the internet world. I would not and do not read anything into the change of hosting providers – in the sense that there is no evidence of any attempt to camouflage or obfuscate  the location of the Ripoff Report website. This will be disappointing to anti-ROR types, who otherwise might be quick to jump on this as “evidence” of Ripoff Report “running and hiding” etc. etc.

According to twitter and blog posts from Ripoff Report editor Ed Magedson and other staffers, Ripoff Report continues to be plagued by organized  attempts to copy content for reuse on other websites, hence the use of Distil’s technology, which is claimed to thwart, or at least, reduce the copying or scraping of content.

Whether this technology is fully effective remains to be seen. Like other “anti measures” (such as CAPTCHAs) the bad guys soon devise high and low tech work-arounds, some using the very low cost and abundant manual labor workforce in the emerging economies. And that is a topic for another upcoming blog we are currently working on.

An excellent article at CNN Money fully concurs with our own research: LinkedIn is a goldmine for social engineering and competitive intelligence, as well as outright fraud and ecrime. LinkedIn knows what is going on, but has chosen to follow the path of aggressive membership growth – allowing easy signups without robust identity validation.

A LinkedIn spokesperson commented on the CNN story with their standard response: “We recommend members connect only with people that they know and trust.  All Internet users should of course be aware of the fact that there are bad guys out there who unfortunately resort to things like phishing attacks, and that people should use common sense and tools available to them to ensure that they don’t fall prey.”

That’s not good enough. We need them to do a LOT more. And quickly.

The full CNN article entitled “LinkedIn is a hacker’s dream tool” can be read here

Please add your comments on your experiences with LinkedIn fraud, phishers and fakes below.

After three years in this field I can say with a high degree of confidence that revenge is one of the primary reasons for a reputational attack.

Anything you say, do or is a known negative, may be used against you by someone seeking revenge. Even if their issue is completely unrelated to the negative details they may send to others or publish online.

To reduce the possibility of an online reputational crisis

• Avoid getting into online arguments with strangers.
• Don’t harass, bait or defame others online.
• Don’t lie about your background, education or accomplishments.
• Don’t get arrested.
• Don’t get convicted.
• Don’t have an affair, especially with a co-worker or boss.
• Try not to post online, send emails, texts or leave voicemails when you are drunk, high or angry.
• Don’t steal content and claim it as yours or use it for your own ends.

In a nutshell:

• Don’t do things that are guaranteed to piss people off .
• Stop, think and resist the urge to act in haste. (Yes, that’s not easy for some.)
• Always expect the unexpected.
• Be prepared to respond and defend.

One can’t help but notice that on many of the blogs, comments and posts that appear online pertaining to Ed Magedson, the oft-maligned founder of the consumer complaints website Ripoff Report, statements are made (often vehemently) that Ed is a “wanted man” or “under Federal indictment.”

Based on the repetitive wording of the claims the writers seem to be repeating things that they must have read elsewhere online. Proof of these claims, or even links to pertinent court records seem elusive.

Personally I found that the assertions lacked credibility – in that the FBI would have little difficulty locating almost anyone (unless they be a Whitey Bulger.)

So it was illuminating to read that in a recent Arizona Court of Appeals decision on a count of defamation against Ed, the court wrote that the purported originator of these allegations had in fact stated in an earlier deposition that they were not true.

“Magedson supports his argument for actual malice with Brewington’s admission in a deposition that he knew Magedson was not wanted by the F.B.I. and he knew Magedson was not a criminal on the run”

Quoted from ¶41 found on page nineteen of the Memorandum Decision found here:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/76608180/Xcentric-Ventures-v-John-F-Brewington-Arizona-Court-of-Appeals-Opinion

Whilst I am in no position to offer anyone legal advice, it would seem wise for those who have been repeating and re-broadcasting these claims to review the court document with a view to revising their position.

Remember folks “Of course it must be true. I read it on the Internet. In LOTS of places.” is not a very effective affirmative defense.

You may not be aware that larger size versions of LinkedIn profile pictures are available – that’s only if the owner had originally uploaded a higher resolution version. LinkedIn automatically resizes the uploaded pictures to a uniform “thumbnail” size of 60 pixels x 60 pixels, but the original is also made available for anyone to view.

Here’s how to view yours or anyone’s:

1. Hover over the profile picture.
2. A “magnifier” tool image appears in the bottom right of pic.
3. Click on the “plus” in the magnifier and the full-size picture will appear in a pop-up window.

If there is no larger picture available the tool does not appear.

Privacy tip: Resize your picture before uploading. 200 or 250 pixels maximum is big enough for a contact or potential contact to know it’s really you.