● 07.14.09
●● Carphone Warehouse AstroTurfing Exposed, Microsoft’s Voyage Into Twitter Continues
Posted in Deception, Fraud, Mail, Marketing, Microsoft at 8:26 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Carphone Warehouse disguises AstroTurfing as worship on the Web
Boycott Novell has had its encounters with agencies whose job is to plant fake (paid) blog posts. We always snitch on them. See Unruly Media for example. It seems reasonable to bring criminal charges* against such agencies (and those who hire them for services) and then shut them down permanently. We already do all that we can to address this problem [1, 2, 3, 4] and today we hope to help expose Carphone Warehouse, thanks to our reader David Gerard. Here is David’s summary of the incident:
This just arrived and appears genuine. Carphone Warehouse are (a) sending spam (b) to request blog spam. I suggest not dealing with them, cancelling existing contracts with them, and telling them why.
For future reference, a copy of the evidence is appended in the body of this post. Here is another complete copy:
Delivered-To: dgerard@gmail.com Received: by 10.102.215.10 with SMTP id n10cs431768mug; Mon, 13 Jul 2009 05:41:07 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.211.195.3 with SMTP id x3mr5020984ebp.28.1247488867684; Mon, 13 Jul 2009 05:41:07 -0700 (PDT) Return-Path: Received: from mobiles.co.uk (mail.mobiles.co.uk [81.6.195.106]) by mx.google.com with ESMTP id 5si330642eyh.50.2009.07.13.05.41.07; Mon, 13 Jul 2009 05:41:07 -0700 (PDT) Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of webpartners@mobiles.co.uk designates 81.6.195.106 as permitted sender) client-ip=81.6.195.106; Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=pass (google.com: domain of webpartners@mobiles.co.uk designates 81.6.195.106 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=webpartners@mobiles.co.uk Received: from [195.242.214.21] (HELO ds4) by mobiles.co.uk (CommuniGate Pro SMTP 5.2.14) with ESMTP id 22484445 for dgerard@gmail.com; Mon, 13 Jul 2009 13:41:07 +0100 Subject: =?iso-8859-1?Q?davidgerard=2Eco=2Euk?= Sender: “=?iso-8859-1?Q?webpartners@mobiles=2Eco=2Euk?=” From: “=?iso-8859-1?Q?webpartners@mobiles=2Eco=2Euk?=” Date: Mon, 13 Jul 2009 13:41:05 +0100 To: “=?iso-8859-1?Q?dgerard@gmail=2Ecom?=” X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal Content-Transfer-Encoding: Quoted-Printable MIME-Version: 1.0 X-USER_IP: 195.242.214.20 X-Mailer: JMail 4.3.0 by Dimac Content-Type: text/plain; charset=”iso-8859-1″ Message-ID: Hello. I`m Chris Conwell, Director at mobiles.co.uk. A wholly owned subsidiary of the Carphone Warehouse Group, we were the UK`s first retail mobile phone website (launched in 1995) and are now the largest web-only mobile phone store in the UK.I was searching the web for decent potential partners and came across davidgerard.co.uk. I have an idea which I hope you will find useful:-We would like to have our editorial team research and hand write some content for you to add to a page on davidgerard.co.uk. We will agree a subject with you that is relevant to both of our sites (it won`t be a sales pitch for us!) and will include a single simple text link back to a relevant content page on our site. The content will be uniquely written for you and will not be re-used elsewhere. It should be helpful to your visitors and of course the search engines, as will the presence of a relevant link back to us. Hopefully we will also benefit from the link in the longer term. We are not currently in the position of being able to exchange or return links so we thought this could be a good alternative.Naturally there are no costs whatsoever for you.If this isn`t appropriate for you, please accept my sincere apologies for having troubled you.GETTING A QUICK RESPONSEI realise you may prefer to simply reply to this email which is no problem and I`ll respond as quickly as I can. However, I have found that email isn`t always as reliable as everyone thinks plus I`m out and about a lot of the time. We have therefore created a simple and quick-to-use response page that provides detailed information and answers to questions on the various options and allows you to send messages to our team . . and lots more. The page is at http://www.mobiles.co.uk/partner-response.html and we have created an access code for davidgerard.co.uk which is 20090711150119IEQFU.REMOVAL If you feel I should not have sent you this email, I`m really sorry – please just reply with REMOVE in the subject.Please let me know your thoughts.Kind Regards – Chris Conwell Director www.mobiles.co.uk Mobiles.co.uk Ltd is a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Carphone Warehouse Group PLCRegistered in England no. 3253714 at 1, Portal Way, London W3 6RS
It is not enough only to expose but to also shut down the agencies that do all of this. Lack of complaints means that they can carry on unabated (maybe just humiliated).
It is worth adding that Microsoft steps deeper into Twitter.
As of late Wednesday, the new Microsoft account had three posts — one pointing to a new feature, one to a new product, and another to a positive review of Microsoft’s Bing search engine.
The last time we summarised Microsoft’s activity in Twitter was last month. There are also the following posts to become familiar with because Microsoft hired several agencies to police Twitter:
User “Microsoft Incentives” Wants to be Your Friend, TooMicrosoft’s Twitter AstroTurf ContinuesWho is Pumping MSFT and Pimping Microsoft in Twitter?Microsoft Hires Federated Media for Twitter AstroTurfingDoes Microsoft Still Create Twitter Accounts for Guerilla Marketing?Microsoft’s AstroTurfing, Twitter, Waggener Edstrom, and Jonathan Zuck
More information on the subject of Microsoft AstroTurfing is appended below. █
Related:
LawMedia Group May be Another Confirmed Microsoft AstroTurfing AgencyThe Microsoft Connection with Dewey Square Group and DCI/New MediaMicrosoft ‘Bribes’ Mac Bloggers to Slam Apple, Gartner Hosts Google FUDMicrosoft, TCS, DCI, Edelman, and Those Fake Letters About IP/SCO/MonopolyJames Plamondon: Microsoft GuerrillaFullSIX and Mr. Youth LLC May Be Ruining the Web (AstroTurfing) on Microsoft’s BehalfMicrosoft: 800 lb. GuerrillaAstroturfing Examples: Learning How Microsoft Tames the InternetWaggener Edstrom, Maureen O’Gara and Other Microsoft ShillsPartial Index: Summary of Bribed Sites, Journalists, and Bloggers (Vista 7)Waggener-Edstrom Behind the 2008 Laptop Bribes, Edelman Behind 2006′sManipulation, Astroturfing, and What Governments Can DoBeware the OOXML AstroTurfer: “The Wraith”, “multivac1”, “hAl”, Among Other NymsMicrosoft May Have Bribed India for OOXML PressureMicrosoft Has Been Rigging Votes/Polls for AgesGary M. Stewart (aka “Flatfish”) About Microsoft AstroTurfing: “It’s made me A LOT of money….”Former Microsoft Shill Openly Confesses, Alleges Microsoft Still Does ThisRespecting AstroTurfers?Some New (But Very Old) Microsoft AstroTurfing ExamplesJoe Barr, Linux.com Editor – My ObituaryJoe Barr Knew Microsoft’s Tactics All Too Well66 Pages of Microsoft EvilnessAnother AstroTurf Scam Exposed?Quick Mention: Sony is AstroTurfing, Just Like MicrosoftMemo to Novell: Leave YouTube AloneMicrosoft Blast from the Past: Ads Banned for Spurring ViolenceIs YouTube’s “NovellVideo” a Novell AstroTurfer?Microsoft/Munchkin ‘Breaks’ the Web to Break Open Document Standards (Again)Rob Enderle Guarantees “Amazing Numbers”, Show E-mails to MicrosoftMicrosoft Agents from Waggener Edstrom Airbrush Wikipedia, Glorify PaymasterMicrosoft Unleashes Proxies at Journalists to Defend Vulnerable VistaMicrosoft’s OOXML Viral Marketing Reaches YouTube
“I’m a huge fan of guerrilla marketing.”
–Joe Wilcox, Microsoft Fan
_______* The practice is already illegal in Europe (there is actually a good link to a more recent article about the Commission ushering a law around June). The US FTC catches up. People should contact the European Commission and/or the FTC (the World Wide Web has no physical borders). Those who still AstroTurf are essentially breaking the law, which was officially passed over a year ago.
From December 31, when the change becomes law in the UK, they can be named and shamed by trading standards or taken to court.
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