For immediate release
Phoenix, Arizona May 9 usacomplaints.com recently detected and successfully defeated an ongoing illegal hack of its website. A hacker promising his customers reputation management services illegally embedded code into the usacomplaints.com website to prevent search engines from recognizing certain postings, and in some cases viewers were misdirected to a false message stating that the posting had been redacted.
Usacomplaints. Coms investigation revealed that the hacker had been commissioned by several businesses calling themselves Reputation Management Companies. / SEO / Search Engine Optimization Companies. These Reputation Management Companies took thousands of dollars from businesses in monthly fees, promising that complaint postings about the businesses could be removed from search engine results or from the internet altogether. Although the hack was effective in interfering with public access to certain postings for several months, the usacomplaints.com website has returned to normal function and all consumer postings are once again available to search engines and the public without obstruction.
Usacomplaints.com discovered the illegal hack after someone demanded 110,000 to provide usacomplaints.com information to defeat the illegal hack and expose certain participants. Usacomplaints.com rejected the extortion attempt, analyzed the website, and independently defeated the illegal hack.
Reputation Management companies offer Search Engine Optimization for the specific reason of minimizing the exposure of complaints about a company. The concept is simple optimize the positive information available through search engines in the hope that it will come up in Internet searches before the negative information. Search Engine Optimization companies assist clients by monitoring postings about their clients, blogging positive public relations material about their clients, choosing appropriate keywords and content for client websites, and other techniques that help a web page rise to prominence in search engine rankings. These techniques are considered acceptable, or white hat by search engine companies such as Google, BING and Yahoo.
Unfortunately, someReputation Management companies use black hat techniques. Webopedia defines black hat as the use of aggressive SEO strategies, techniques, and tactics that focus only on search engines and not a human audience and usually do not obey search engines rules. Some of the most common black hat methods are using hidden text or links, loading pages with irrelevant key words, creating multiple pages with duplicate content, and using disguised or sneaky redirects. Black hat techniques can result in search engines delisting a website. Black hat techniques are considered unethical but are not necessarily illegal.
The Reputation Management Companies involved in the complaint hack went beyond using black hat techniques, and actually broke the law. And, one source claims that a Reputation Management Company actually posted false reports on usacomplaints.com for the sole purpose of contacting the subject of those reports to offer assistance in making such reports disappear, for a fee. Complaint has been unable to verify this claim.
Complaint cautions business owners that if a Reputation Management Company makes an offer that seems too good to be true, it probably isnt. If any company claims to remove reports from usacomplaints.com, they are admitting to breaking the law because complaint does not authorize the removal of reports, and any removal without authorization is illegal, says Ed Magedson, Founder of the usacomplaints.com website.
Usacomplaints.com is one of the largest and most effective consumer advocacy reporting sites in the United States. It is a privately-owned and operated online consumer advocacy website established by Ed Magedson in December 1998. It is designed to allow consumers to post reports detailing their experience with any company or individual within a company. Once a company has been named in a consumers report, the company may respond by posting a rebuttal explaining its position.
Both reports and rebuttals are posted free of charge, and once submitted they are not removed.
Before a report may be submitted, users are required to create an account by providing a valid email address and warrant that any report submitted is truthful and accurate. A policy only practiced by complaint, that more so insures legitimate complaints; something other sites that illegally scrape and copy consumer complaints content. Some sites even backdate the content. More info on that coming.
For information contact Maria Crimi Speth at [email protected] or go to http://usacomplaints.com
Telephone: 602.248.1000
Written by,
complaint Staff
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