Cosmetic surgery company fined $300,000 for faking online reviews
by Arlen Parsa
Whoa, go New York state Attorney General’s office!
Internal emails discovered by Attorney General Cuomo’s investigation show that Lifestyle Lift employees were given specific instructions to engage in this illegal activity. One e-mail to employees said: ‘Friday is going to be a slow day — I need you to devote the day to doing more postings on the web as a satisfied client.’ Another internal email directed a Lifestyle Lift employee to ‘Put your wig and skirt on and tell them about the great experience you had.’ In addition to posting on various Internet message board services, Lifestyle Lift also registered and created stand-alone Web sites, such as MyFaceliftStory.com, designed to appear as if they were created by independent and satisfied customers of Lifestyle Lift. The sites offered positive narratives about the Lifestyle Lift experience. Some of these sites purported to offer forums for users to add their own comments about Lifestyle Lift. In reality, however, Lifestyle Lift either provided all the ‘user comments’ themselves, or closely monitored and edited third-party comments to skew the discussion in favor of Lifestyle Lift.
Longtime readers will remember that I broke the Belkin fraudulent review scandal and have written several times about astroturfed reviews since.
The Daily Background

[…] feeling a little skittish. What if the review I’m reading isn’t a true review, but the work of a corporate shill? What if the advice I’m seeking to resolve a computer problem is simply an effort to guide me […]