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By
Carl Weiss
Forgery
has been around for as long as civilization has flourished. No sooner did humans start using chits
burnished onto clay tablets to trade goods, when you can be sure some
enterprising lad started turning out fakes.
Through the ages people have forged everything from works of art to
currency and stock certificates. Some of the forgers went on to become legends. Many of them went on to prison. However, what most people do not realize is
the effect that forgery has had or could have had on history. Fast forward to
the 21st Century! Today a whole new world of forgery is taking place, not by a few,
but by billions of unsuspecting internet users. We have fake business websites,
fake government websites, Fake blog articles, fake reviews, fake email
solicitations, fake products site, fake social media site, heck, what isn’t
being faked on the web. To start with, let’s look at fakery throughout the ages
to give you a little perspective.
Famous Fakes
Two
thousand years ago, early practitioners put reed pens to papyrus to mimic the
writing of Socrates and other ancient authors whose work was highly valued.
Donation
of Constantine - This ancient letter, which helped bolster
the Catholic Church's
power for roughly 700 years, was probably the
first forgery to significantly impact the course of history. Allegedly sent by
the Roman emperor Constantine the Great to Pope Sylvester I in the fourth
century A.D. Constantine's conversion is
an historical fact, but the letter is a pure fabrication. While its origin is
debated, the Donation was likely concocted between A.D. 750 and A.D. 850,
perhaps by a church official. Various popes used it over the ensuing centuries
to defend their political power, and the Donation was even celebrated
in a painting in the Vatican. It was revealed as a fake in the 15th century.
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While
there are too many art forgeries to enumerate, what shocks many people is to discover that Michelangelo began
his career by passing off an early marble sculpture called Sleeping Erosas as
an ancient Roman statue. Even more
incredible is the way in which Michelangelo pulled off the statue’s “discovery”
by burying it in his art dealer’s yard only to unearth it himself.
When
it comes to famous fakes, art forgery while proving as something of an
embarrassment to wealthy collectors and art historians alike has never had any
real impact on current events. That’s
not the case with counterfeit currency.
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After
the overthrow of the Shah of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini’s minions began to
produce some of the most authentic looking fake $100 bills the world has ever
known. This had an impact on the US
economy, which was so profound that it caused the federal government to
redesign the hundred dollar bills. The reason the
fakes were so hard to spot was due to the fact the feds had sold the Iranians
the same presses, ink and paper to print their currency (known as the Rial)
that we used to print ours.
The Man Who Stole
Portugal
However
the Iranians tried, their counterfeiting enterprise couldn’t hold a candle to
the world’s greatest counterfeiter, a Portuguese by the name of Alves
Reis. The son of an undertaker, Alves
was without a doubt one of the most brazen forgers of all time. Immigrating to Angola in 1920, where he hoped
to make his fortune, he began his career by forging a diploma from Oxford
University, which he used to secure a government post as a public
engineer. When this move did not provide
the kind of return on investment that he would like, Alves took his career to
the next level by forging a check which he used to acquire controlling interest
in the Transafrican Railways of Angola.
Next, he returned to Lisbon and forged yet another check, this one used
to buy controlling interest in a Portuguese company called Ambaca, using the
company kitty to cover his tracks.
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No
sooner was he released when Alves embarked on his most ambitious swindle to
date. Forging a contract to the Bank of
Portugal, he used this paper to recruit several key conspirators, including the
brother of the Portuguese ambassador to the Netherlands. Using these assets along with forged
signatures of Bank of Portugal officials, Alves managed to trick the London
printing firm of Waterlow and Sons Ltd, who were already under contract with
the bank into printing an additional run of currency. (Unlike Iran, Portugal outsourced the
printing of their currency.) What
transpired next was something unprecedented in the history of forgery.
The
printer thinking it had a legitimate contract printed 200,000 banknotes worth
nearly 1% of Portugal’s GDP. Alves used these notes to acquire yet more
businesses, not the least of which was an attempt to buy controlling interest
in the Bank of Portugal itself, in an effort to keep his scheme a secret. The problem was that since Alves had flooded
the country with bogus bills that were in all intents and purposes perfect
forgeries, exposure of the fraud when it did come meant that not only did Alves
Reis along with a number of notable co-conspirators, wind up behind bars,
Portugal’s currency tanked as well. The
following year, a coup d’état took place that toppled the democratically
elected government, replacing it with a military dictatorship that lasted for
34 years. Talk about winning the battle and losing the war.
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Just
as with other countermeasures, for every technological action, there is an
equal and opposite reaction. What this
means in terms of Black Hat SEO, is when such on-site practices such as keyword
stuffing, URL redirecting and spoofing were outlawed, the black hatters turned
their attention off-site by creating backlink farms. When this practice was effectively
eliminated, the black hatters turned their attention to creating fake reviews
and recommendations.
Today
we see the black hat community engaging in all sorts’ unauthorized activity.
You see everything from the creation of fake company websites to fake social
sites. Also included in such fakery is email phishing, fake review sites, fake
followers, fake review posts, and fake review blogposts. The dark side is
unfortunately alive and well online. There are even sites that tell anyone how
to employ black hat techniques that are designed to besmirch a company’s
reputation. This in turn causes the legitimate website to get flagged as using
black hat techniques (even though they did not) which in turn could get them sandboxed
(not showing up in search) or delisted (removed from Googles index).
Watch this PBS Segment on Fake Reviews.
There
is even evidence that some well known review sites like Yelp and Ripoff Report
are profiting by charging large sums to remove negative reviews. Furthermore, some say that positive business reviews are
being held hostage if they don’t buy adverting from the review site. Finally,
retailers are starting to fight back. The media has begun the drum beat of
reports, highlighted by the negative press on PBS special news casts. This and many other articles are finally
bringing the fraud into the light of day.
In a recent Newsfeed entitled, “Amazon Sues Fake Reviewers,” one of the world’s biggest e-tailers decided to sue more than 1,000 individuals on Fiverr.com who made a tidy living by selling phony reviews. The article goes on to say that;
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While
the newsfeed only mentioned Amazon, it leaves this writer to wonder how long it
will be before Google follows suit?
After all, Google reviews are used by millions of businesses worldwide
to generate position on the world’s most popular search engine. Since the same people who can be hired to
post fake reviews on Amazon could be retained to post bogus reviews on other
review sites, including Google’s own, it stands to reason that fakery abounds
online.
What
businesses who avail themselves of black hat technology don’t realize is that
the powers that be don’t only reserve their wrath for the purveyors of the black
hat craft. They routinely turn their gaze to the businesses who use it as well. There are many prominent and otherwise legitimate
businesses whose sites were either sandboxed or delisted by Google when they
were caught in the black hat dragnet. So
it’s logical to assume that when the crackdown on fake reviews comes down,
those caught with their hands in the cookie jar are going to pay dearly for
their transgressions.
Other
than fake reviews, another case of online forgery at its worst occurs during
the run up to Christmas and Hanukkah every year, when cybercriminals spoof
popular retail and shipping sites by creating fake websites that look identical
to the real thing. These online
criminals will email unsuspecting victims to tell them a package is hung up in
transit and the only way to get the problem rectified is to provide their
credit card information. Clicking on the
link leads the intended victim to a clone of a popular website. So convincing is this scam that tens of thousands
of people fall for it every year.
Here
is a short list of business tips you can implement to help combat negative and
fake reviews. You can also learn more by reading some of our preview articles
which discuss reputation management on our blog.
- Create a program and procedure designed to encourages and capture authentic positive reviews from happy customers. These reviews are worth the weight in gold.
- Document all reviews – especially the positive one. This way if a review site tries to remove them you have evidence to counter act their actions. Also these reviews can be used as part of a social media campaign to spread your good name.
- Have a program in place that is designed to head off unhappy customers. Making a disgruntled customer happy is a great way to create loyal customers while also building positive reviews.
- Create a corporate culture of creating quality that strives to go beyond customer expectations. Creating satisfied customers doesn’t just happen.
- Find and take care of good employees. Happy employees serve customers better and help make customers happy. Unhappy employees don’t make customers happy. In fact, they could be writing your next bad review.
- Avoid any kind of black hat trickery as this will ultimately hurt your online ranking and eventually your consumer rating as well.
It
is my hope that we are finally starting to fight back against fake review and
ransom review sites. My advice for those
considering using online forgery is to point out that while you might reap some
benefits in the short term, over the long haul the risk isn’t worth the reward.
Unlike many of the forgers who ultimately wound up behind bars when their
scheme unraveled, today you need to be aware of what’s at stake when it’s fake.
(Unless you want some multinational corporation to send you a subpoena.)
In
this article I have provided a short history of some famous forgeries to give
the reader a perspective on the current state of internet fakery that has been
running amuck for many years. I covered black hat SEO including product and
company rating fakery. I also provided a short list of tips that can
help businesses counteract poor ratings.
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Carl
Weiss is president of WorkingtheWebtoWin.com a
digital marketing agency in Jacksonville, Florida that routinely works with
bloggers and other online marketers to grow their businesses.
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