Filed at 8:48 am, Wednesday July 15th 2009
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 […]
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Filed at 6:28 pm, Wednesday June 24th 2009
by Arlen Parsa
Ever since I broke the Belkin astroturfing scandal earlier this year, people periodically send me emails about other companies who are also trying to pay people to write fake positive reviews of their products on sites like Amazon.com (they range from automated computer backup services to coffee machines). I’m always happy to publish these accounts […]
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Filed at 6:58 am, Wednesday June 10th 2009
by Arlen Parsa
It’s been months since I broke the Belkin fake review scandal, but I still get emails from other ordinary people who discover that something similar is happening elsewhere.
Today I got an email from somebody who just wanted to buy an espresso machine. What they found instead was a rather obvious hoax when it came to […]
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Filed at 5:49 pm, Wednesday May 13th 2009
by Arlen Parsa
Longtime readers know that I’m a documentary film student (actually, as I wrote earlier today, I’m graduating on Sunday). Today I needed a particular piece of equipment called a 6 pin to 4 pin Firewire cable, so I walked to the local RadioShack here in Chicago on State Street to pick one up.
Knowing that such […]
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Filed at 10:51 pm, Tuesday February 03rd 2009
by Arlen Parsa
… Your blogging is parodied by Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams. In a Sunday strip, no less! This one, apparently parodying the Belkin fake reviews story I broke on this blog, appeared in about 2,000 newspapers worldwide on February 1st. Neat.
Update: Thanks to commenter Iris for pointing this out.
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Filed at 9:01 am, Wednesday January 28th 2009
by Arlen Parsa
Above: a fake review, written by the Vice President of Marketing for Carbonite on his own product
If there’s one thing that’s been gratifying about the fallout of the Belkin story is that it has people re-evaluating things they’ve seen in the past, and looking at them in a new light (and then blogging about them).
Today […]
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Filed at 11:09 pm, Tuesday January 27th 2009
by Arlen Parsa
Originally Belkin had intended to issue a second statement last week detailing the results of their internal investigation about alleged wrongdoing on behalf of their employees (a story that broke on this blog). I understand that their investigation has gone on longer than expected, but that they still plan to issue a second statement in […]
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Filed at 2:00 pm, Sunday January 25th 2009
by Arlen Parsa
An anonymous commenter writes on one of my blog posts from this week regarding the Belkin situation:
Having worked for Belkin for 10 years and this is only the tip of the ice berg, I used to do worse than this to gain market share and inside information on the competition. Belkin WAS the hands down […]
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Filed at 9:01 am, Thursday January 22nd 2009
by Arlen Parsa
I rarely do this, but in this case, I can’t help myself from showing three examples (out of thousands) of media coverage of the story I broke last week right here on The Daily Background.
– David Pogue nominates me for “Internet Hero of the Week.”
– The Associated Press picks up the story.
– G4 (formerly TechTV […]
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Filed at 10:43 am, Wednesday January 21st 2009
by Arlen Parsa
Thanks to help from a commenter named Anonymoose, The Daily Background is today able to partially corroborate reports from an anonymous Belkin employee who claimed that the review fraud first reported by The Daily Background last Friday “only scratches the surface.”
Until now, there was only evidence that a single Belkin employee was involved with paying […]
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Filed at 4:54 pm, Monday January 19th 2009
by Arlen Parsa
The technology blog Gizmodo just published an email from a person it says is a Belkin employee who wishes to remain anonymous. The email, reprinted in full below, alleges systemic wrongdoing on the part of corporate higher-ups, who the person says encourage dodgy marketing tactics for products which the employee feels are of poor quality:
[…]
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Filed at 2:44 am, Monday January 19th 2009
by Arlen Parsa
Late Friday night, I published a blog entry exposing how Belkin employee Mike Bayard had been paying people $0.65 for each positive review they wrote of his company’s products on sites like Amazon.com. The item caused a firestorm, with users from Slashdot, Digg, Crunch Gear, Engadget, Gizmodo and dozens of other sites decrying the obviously […]
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Filed at 10:35 pm, Sunday January 18th 2009
by Arlen Parsa
Belkin’s president Mark Reynoso just released this statement to The Daily Background, in response to my previous report about their Amazon sales rep paying people to write fake positive reviews online for their products:
Belkin has always held itself to the highest standards of corporate ethics and its employees to the highest standards of personal integrity. […]
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Filed at 4:34 pm, Saturday January 17th 2009
by Arlen Parsa
Update: Belkin’s President has responded to this report here.
I just put in a call to Belkin’s PR chief, Melody Chalaban regarding my piece about Belkin’s online sales rep paying people to write false reviews of their products. I hope to find out whether or not it is an official company policy to hire people to […]
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Filed at 10:22 pm, Friday January 16th 2009
by Arlen Parsa
Update: Belkin’s president responds to The Daily Background’s report here.
(Update: Welcome to Slashdot, Digg, Engadget, Gizmodo readers! The latest is, I’ve heard from Belkin’s public relations department and I am expecting a formal comment to come out from them relatively soon, so stick around as this thing develops.)
I know I usually don’t write about consumer […]
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