Abusing the Internet with Fake and Fictitious Blogs about Competitors

This entry is taken from the blog Bedwetting Alarms Deceit Catcher with permission. It presents a display of how deceitful parties can abuse the internet to bad-mouth other parties. This is very unethical and demonstrates very poor sensibilities on the part of the writer of the blog(s) being critiques below. It is being reproduced here to give an example of deceit and abuse that can occur on the internet. For additional information about the party mentioned here, there is an abundance of information on the same blog.

Theos Medical Systems  "Chummie" Carry Deceit to their Highest Levels yet!

We came across a new blog drybuddyez-malem-bedwetting-alarm.blogspot.com  written by "Jeremy Akin." The "Author" could have used his real name, or the name of his company Theos Medical Systems, which we strongly believe is behind this bogus blog. We shall now refer to the author as Theos.

In this spurious and fake blog, Theos has attempted to imitate this blog

bedwettingalarmsdeceitcatcher.blogspot.com  .

But in traditional Theos style and frame of mind, he is unable to do any original work other than blather nonsense. Theos makes it appear that DryBuddy is "attacking" Malem, Bedwettingstore, and other competitors of Chummie. This effort is so shallow that it does not take someone like us, dissecting Theos's skullduggery for well over a year, to see many repeated ideas, terms, wording and outright rubbish that Theos has so abundantly proliferated on the internet and wherever else he can. This includes fake criticisms on Amazon reviews and anywhere else that Theos thinks people will read and believe Theos. This is a very poor frame of mind and manner of dealing with the world in general. Attack the competition, regardless of how deceitful and fake these attacks may be. And hyper-inflate his own Chummie products, even though they are technically quite old fashioned and even obsolete. Lots of puffed up wording does not make any Chummie product technologically on the forefront of the bed wetting alarm industry. You can refer to a site we often use at

sites.google.com/site/comparebedwettingalarms

Look at the wireless alarms and the wired alarms, and do take into consideration the exorbitant price that Chummie has been deceiving people into paying for them, and it becomes very obvious that Chummie is very outclassed.

Deceit can only last so long before people get wise to it.

And we should point out that in copying substantial parts of bedwettingalarmsdeceitcatcher.blogspot.com

without any statement to that effect, this is outright plagiarism. Though knowing Theos's character by now, we very much doubt that plagiarism, falsification, and infringement have ever stopped Theos from doing whatever he thought he could get away with.

It gets even worse, as Theos has no conscience, misgivings, compunctions or punctiliousness (is our English getting to complicated for Theos?) about changing data and names as may suit him. He has very obviously done this to much of the material in this blog, substantially distorting it as he has distorted his efforts with Chummie products and his pathetic inventions with which he has been attacking competitors.

As we said, deceit can only last so long before people get wise to it.

We doubt that it is worth our while to display further scorn and derision at Theos. It is only water bouncing of a duck's back. But as the James Whitcomb Riley (1849-1916) wrote:

" When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck."   "Quack, Quack!"  A Quack in more ways than one!

Theos goes on with other fake blogs as well,

bedewttingstoredeceit.blogspot.com   and

malem-bedwetting-alarm-reviews.blogspot.com

which are essentially copies of drybuddyez-malem-bedwetting-alarm.blogspot.com .

Notice that bedwettingstore is mis-spelled as bedewttingstore in the blog name. Is that a real error or intentional mis-spelling? He could have spelled Malem as Malam or something else. But this might defeat his purpose in getting a U.S. Trademark on the name Malem. We do wonder why Theos does such wacky things. Perhaps deceit and arrogance go hand-in-hand, with the perpetrator thinking that he is invincible. It is public knowledge that Theos and its owner are defendants in a lawsuit filed by Malem about this matter.

As we have often said, Theos is really coming apart at his seams. For a blog purportedly written by DryBuddy and against Malem (to name two supposed antagonists), it is very, very surprising that no mention is made of Chummie products. That's OK. You don't have to read these phony Theos blogs to learn about Theos and Chummie. Most of this blog is oriented towards them!

And another blog came to our attention simply because Chummie is frequently on it (together with Malem and many others). This blog goes back to 2012.

bg-alarm.blogspot.com

This is a "blog field" for bedwetting alarms on which many manufacturers have posted their alarm "advertisements" to get Google exposure. Something that should be totally ignored by everyone, including Google. And it truly is obsolete.

The first three mentioned blogs are truly amazing behavior for most reasonable, honest and rational human beings, but never put deceit as being beyond Theos. Much of this blog has focused on that.

And for Theos's information, in case he decides to change his masterpiece blog or make it disappear, we have made a copy of it. Such a masterpiece should be preserved for posterity (or any other legitimate and legal cause).

Chummie: Very Strong Deceit on Internet Review Sites and Blogs.

This entry is taken from the blog Bedwetting Alarms Deceit Catcher with permission. It presents the culmination of analysis for deceitful use of both Shopping Reviews and Product Blogs by a certain party. It is being reproduced here to give an example of deceit and abuse that can occur on the internet. For additional information about the party mentioned here, there is an abundance of information on the same blog.

Chummie: Very Strong Deceit on Internet Review Sites and Blogs.

Chummie continues to behave disgracefully. This will provide opportunities for many more blog entries relating to Chummie’s deceit and other malicious practices, all of which have been recorded. 

First, it is appropriate to reveal that the Product A mentioned and analyzed in

http://bedwettingalarmsdeceitcatcher.blogspot.com/2013/07/deceit-on-internet-shopping-reviews.html

http://bedwettingalarmsdeceitcatcher.blogspot.com/2013/07/deceit-on-internet-product-blogs.html  and

http://bedwettingalarmsdeceitcatcher.blogspot.com/2013/07/deceit-on-internet-product-blogs-strong.html

and also below in corresponding blogs, is the Chummie bedwetting alarm product. 

Starting with the reviews of Chummie on Amazon, it is our opinion that 34% of the total reviews for Chummie may have been biased by Chummie. In other words, they may be fake reviews placed there by Chummie and/or its associates. Of these, about 94% were very positive reviews, which would be perfectly understandable if they were biased by Chummy. We also noticed that many negative opinions that we saw in 2012 and later had been removed. This would also certainly look good for Chummie, and we cannot imagine it happening without Chummie’s instigation. 

As an excellent example of a very negative and valid Chummie Amazon review, which was on Amazon for some months before being removed for unknown reasons for a perfectly legitimate Amazon review (we strongly believe by Chummie's frequent complaining and manipulations of whatever faxts that they can). For all persons interested in Chummie's shenanigans, even on Amazon, please read the details on
http://bedwettingalarmsdeceitcatcher.blogspot.com/2013/08/chummie-very-strong-deceit-fraud-on.html .
 

Relating to product blogs, we did a fresh Google search for Chummie blogs, and looked at the results to identify what we would regard as advertisements for Chummie on various sites that were displayed. We found 14 of the 30 total sites on the three pages to be blatant advertisements for Chummie. Almost all appeared to be sites run by individuals or small groups, who were trying to make a buck. We did include in the total any sites “owned” by Chummie, and also any sites that were critical of Chummie on these pages which were not included in the "blogs for Chummie." So to have almost 50% approval from small blogs/sites is a great display of buying positive endorsements.

These confirm our opinion that Chummie is the leader in false advertising, and has no credibility. It also reinforces our opinion that these "reviews" and product "opinions" should be ignored.

Expect more about Chummie's abuse of the internet and continuing deceit. 

Very Strong Deceit. 

Deceit on the Internet: Product Blogs --- Strong Deceit.

Deceit on the Internet: Product Blogs     ---           Strong Deceit

This post is being copied from http://bedwettingalarmsdeceitcatcher.blogspot.com/  with the permission of the blog's owner, as it is very relevant to the purpose of this blog.

In our blog entry dated July 20^th, we discussed how Product Blogs provided a strong opportunity for deceit. We decided to do some basic data analysis to see how strongly product blogs were used to spread the manufacturers’ message in such a way that the manufacturer affected the outcome of the “review.”

We did a Google search for the two bedwetting alarms A and B which were candidates for strong deceit. We did not include in our count any sites that were explicitly used for selling the product (like Amazon.com), or sites openly run by the manufacturer (like XXXXX.com or XXXXX.blogspot.com) or a site openly selling the product. We did include in our count blogs and sites being used by the manufacturer and not revealing the manufacturer’s ownership of the site, which either served as a direct display of the manufacturers’ advertising, or did the same indirectly as an “opinion” or “review” by the owner of the site or blog.

Some blog owners were reasonably open about their policies. To quote one site/blog:

“This blog accepts forms of cash advertising, sponsorship, paid insertions or other forms of compensation. The compensation received may influence the advertising content, topics or posts made in this blog.”

That’s pretty straight forward. But our experience with the content of every site/blog was that the compensation received did influence the review in a very positive manner.

Searching the first 6 pages of the Google search results, our count for these possibly phony reviews was:

Product A:           29 biased reviews

Product B:           25 biased reviews

These numbers did not surprise us knowing what these products were, and who their owners were.

We do want to point out that these possibly fake reviews account for about one-half (fifty percent) of the first five or six pages of search results under Google search.

This is abominable in our opinion, that these manufacturers should be overwhelming the internet with such deceitful opinions and reviews, reviews that have been paid for or “sponsored” by them. It is also indicative of the lack of care or respect of the public by these manufacturers, who may do anything they can get away with to sell their products, including the excessive deceit that we could count.

We again recommend that persons reading opinions on the internet after an internet search should ignore almost every review or review site. The biases are usually excessive, generally quite substantially in favor of the manufacturer. We again suggest that the reader go to a neutral and very comprehensive data site such as www.urinealarms.com to examine the different products in the market place, and make straight forward comparisons of product qualities and prices.

Deceit on the Internet: Product Blogs

Deceit on the Internet: Product Blogs

 

This post is being copied from http://bedwettingalarmsdeceitcatcher.blogspot.com/  with the permission of the blog's owner, as it is very relevant to the purpose of this blog.


Continuing with our discussion of Deceit on the Internet, as suggested and explained at http://stopdeceit.blogspot.com/2013/07/stop-deceit-on-internet.html we shall look at how product blogs are used for deceit.


Product Blogs:

This is something that each interested person can do for themselves. We did a Google search by the product names for the four products that we had considered in the earlier post of "Deceit on the Internet: Shopping Reviews." We can only give you a summary and our “feelings” based on our search. We only searched for the four products, A, B, C, and D which were evaluated in our earlier comments about Shopping Reviews.

For both Product A and Product B there were a large number of listings on product blogs. It is difficult to distinguish much difference between the techniques or results for Product A versus Product B. They both seemed to be reading out of the same book, and had rather similar results. So the next few paragraphs summarizes our thoughts for both Product A and Product B.

Both manufacturers were very aggressive in trying to “place” their products with any and all parties that would offer a "good" opinion about these products on their blogs, or help in spreading “the word” in a "good" sense about these products on the internet. Almost without exception, these blogging parties were individuals or small groups of individuals. Some stated that they were writing this blog entry because they had been given this product to review and then keep. We are aware that there are some blogs whose “owners” will write whatever they are told to write and enter that into their blogs for a monetary fee or other compensation. These blogs were also represented.

Both manufacturers also compensated these blogs by offering “discount coupons” through these blogs, which the blog owner would hopefully benefit from by attracting more traffic and consequently more paid advertising of some sort or the other. Many of these blogs were obviously providing statements (or reviews) from the manufacturers, or were copying significant elements of the manufacturers’ advertising in their “reviews.” Even blogs set up with names associated with bedwetting or bedwetting alarms were essentially servicing the manufacturers, and had doubtful or no validity or credibility in our opinion. Furthermore, some blog writers were blindly taking for granted the validity of other reviews on the internet (which we have already demonstrated can be quite fictional) and using them to validate their preferences, if these reviews so suited them. This may sound absurd and is undoubtedly unethical, but there is a lot of selective adoption of possibly unreliable information, if it suits the reviewer’s objectives.

As an illustration of how a manufacturer may actually advertise to entice other bloggers and persons to promote their product, we have copied an actual example from the internet, leaving out the blog and manufacturer’s name:


Bedwetting Alarm Giveaway & Blogger Opp!

This is a FREE blogger opportunity (with paid options)

Open to US Residents Only

Sign up:  April 14, 2013 to April 28, 2013

Giveaway Dates:   May 1, 2013 to May 15, 2013

Participation Rules:

·        Participation is FREE (with paid options).

·        You agree to promote the giveaway once it goes live at least 3x per week

Pricing:

·        One free link of your choice - Facebook or Twitter or Pinterest only with announcement post

·        $5.00 fee to waive announcement post

·        The following additional links are $1.00 each:

o   Facebook

o   Twitter

o   Pinterest

 I will be posting a reminder for this once it goes live! 

We did not find such issues for Products C and D to any significant extent.

Bearing in mind that Products A and B are relatively new compared to Products C and D, we must assume that the manufacturers of A and B were trying to make their presence known on the internet. It is unfortunate that both manufacturers had no qualms about paying (in cash or kind) to having their products touted on these blogs. These reviews and blogs are bogus and fake. Any reader of these blogs must remember that they have poor credibility and are often mouthpieces for whoever may be compensating them in any way. And more individuals are trying to make an extra buck by starting such “for hire” blogs. This is not a good trend as two sets of greedy people, the people setting up and running blogs, and the manufacturers and sellers, are only increasing deceit on the internet by fake postings on these blogs.

We should also point out that many blogs run by organizations that have developed a reputation in the heath advisory area can also be quite deceitful. The organization running the blog in its name may be unbiased and innocent, but members posting reviews, and moderators responsible for editing these reviews can be quite biased. Moderators have been know to delete entries that may question their biases and opinions, and even  make it impossible for opposing views to be registered by "closing" that thread while maintaining on the blog only the opinions that the moderator supports, and get away with it because of inadequate controls on the part of the owner organization.

In conclusion, we must agree with Stop Deceit, that many blogs run by private individuals, small groups of persons, and even normally reliable organizations without adequate controls, can have substantial fake reviews on them. If Consumer Reports reviews bedwetting alarms, you can expect unbiased reviews. But “Moms-bedwetting-alarms-reviews” (the name is fictional and not intended to criticize anyone) probably should be ignored, unless you find its reading entertaining. Caution and prudence are highly recommended before the reader accepts reviews at their face value from these blogs.

 

Deceit on the Internet: Shopping Reviews.

This post is being copied from http://bedwettingalarmsdeceitcatcher.blogspot.com/  with the permission of the blog's owner, as it is very relevant to the purpose of this blog.


Deceit on the Internet                                                                         (July 19, 2013)


We were intrigued by an entry (comment) by Anon on our entry for Chummie: Strong Deceit by Perversion on July 15, 2013. Anon referenced a blog http://stopdeceit.blogspot.com/ titled Stop Deceit on the Internet. The author(s), using the name “Stop Deceit,” gave a decent description of deceit on the internet. Stop Deceit gave three basic sources of deceit on the internet:
1.       Manufacturer’s Web Sites,
2.       Product Blogs, and
3.       Shopping Reviews.
We would strongly recommend that readers look at http://stopdeceit.blogspot.com/ .

We have been systematically addressing deceit on manufacturers’ blog sites for bedwetting alarm manufacturers on this blog. We felt intrigued about how much deceit there may be with respect to bed wetting alarms on shopping blogs and shopping reviews. As we are following the bedwetting alarm industry, we thought we should look at bedwetting alarm related deceit in Product Blogs and Shopping Reviews


Shopping Reviews:

We chose Amazon.com for our basic analysis, as Amazon is undoubtedly the biggest shopping site (even for bedwetting alarms) and we can expect the most buyer reviews. Furthermore, Amazon does provide more information about the reviewer and the reviewer’s history at Amazon, so that we could better analyze the reviewer. To get a sufficiently large sample, we arbitrarily decided to look at “wired” alarms currently being sold on Amazon so that their reviews would be available to us. We also decided to only consider alarms where there were more than fifty reviews, so that we could have a reasonable sample size. Even there, to somewhat limit the time we might have to spend on this task, we selected four alarms which we felt might adequately cover the different styles and prices available.

Our intent was to try and get a plausible idea of the extent to which the reviews were unduly biased, and whether they were biased in favor of or against that particular alarm. In other words, we were attempting to identify the extent to which reviews might have been provided by shills or touts of the manufacturer (which would unduly favor that item) or by competitors (which would unduly bad-mouth the item). We then came up with a set of criteria to apply to each and every revue for that product on Amazon. We do want to point out that the criteria are subjective and are not necessarily perfect in their ability to identify touts or shills. But we feel that the identified reviews are much more likely to be unduly biased, and not be honest reviews by honest and actual buyers.

The following table shows the  results for the number of possibly biased reviews out of the total, and further breaks them up into positive bias (perhaps shills for the manufacturer/seller) and negative bias (perhaps shills for competitors). They are expressed as a percentage of the total identified biased reviews (rounded to the nearest whole percent):

Product A:           34%        Positive Bias       32%        Negative Bias     2%

Product B:           31%        Positive Bias       25%        Negative Bias     6%

Product C:           11%        Positive Bias         9%        Negative Bias     2%

Product D:             2%        Positive Bias         2%        Negative Bias     0%

 

We must confess that the high percentage of bias that we judged to be present for Product A came as no surprise to us. We also see that a huge proportion of those are positively biased, perhaps unduly raising the "ratings" for Product A. We must “assume” that the manufacturer is quite desperate or non-caring about using deceitful reviews so as to raise the ratings of their product. So the “ratings” that you see on Amazon for this product are possibly very biased (skewed) on the high side and wrong.

 

Product B was the newest of the four products examined, and we were somewhat surprised that the percentage of possibly fake reviews was so high. The primary difference between Product B and Product A is that B has not flooded Amazon with possibly biased positive ratings as much as Product A might have. So the proportion of positive to negative biased reviews is less for Product B than for Product A. Never-the-less, Product B also appears to be overindulging in introducing biased reviews into Amazon.

 

Product C is an established product. Although the percentage of possibly fake reviews was lower, we still considered it to be high. The ratio of positive to negative biased reviews is about the same as for Product B.

 

Product D is also an established product. Here, our surprise was that the bias was so low, as compared to the other products. Without mentioning names, we must commend the manufacturer of Product D for our not noticing much presence of shills and touts in the reviews of this product.

 

In conclusion, we must agree with Stop Deceit, that even the “best” of shopping sites, using their own criteria for weeding out fake reviews, was unable to prevent a substantial number of possibly fake reviews from being presented on Amazon.com . For Product A and Product B, we estimate that about one-third of the reviews could be fake. This is a huge fraction of the total reviews. Consequently, do not take these reviews as “the honest truth.” Take them with a grain of salt, or even a shovelful of salt.

Stop Deceit on the Internet.

I have been aware of abuse of the internet by manufacturers, businesses and individuals, to deceive readers. This appears to be increasing at an alarming rate. I was prompted to write this article about deceit on the internet by reading a very interesting site:

http://bedwettingalarmsdeceitcatcher.blogspot.com/

which examines deceit on manufacturers' web sites in the bed wetting alarm industry. 

Sources for the presentation of deceit on the internet:

1.            Manufacturer's Web Sites.

By definition, these should be the most authoritative and comprehensive sites for the products made by the manufacturers. Unfortunately, this is not so. Look for:

*             Detailed information about products.
*             Completeness of product information presented.
*             Accuracy of product information.
*             Details of manufacturer policies (including warranties, returns, support)
*             Honesty of information presented and claims made.
*             A true understanding of the relevance and utility of the technology and product design.

For most consumers, it is difficult and maybe impossible to properly assess the above. Some manufacturers are like clams, making big claims but providing little relevant or valid information. What I think of as the clam hiding its pearl (or more likely the poor or obsolete product). Then there is the manufacturer with lots of extravagant claims, lots of flash, lots of contradictory statements, lots of exaggerations, lots of deceit, the least professional, and the most troublesome. And in-between, there are reasonable manufacturers, usually with the best products, and not needing to exaggerate or hide facts. Although a manufacturer's web site will be biased towards the manufacturer's products, it is critical that the presentation be fair, complete, and not deceitful. Larger manufacturers tend to be less deceitful, as the FTC (in the U.S.) and other organizations keep a closer eye on them and are more likely to take punitive action. Small manufacturers and businesses, on the other hand, out of self interest, are much more prone to using deceit on their own sites, and also use second-hand and subsidiary players to spread their deceit.

2.            Product Blogs.  

The product blogs, where reviews are presented by third parties. These are usually people trying to make some money out of their homes by offering their services for a fee. The fee can be cash. It can be promotional considerations, so that more people will get driven to their blog and they may be able to get more advertisers to post on their blog. And frequently, the free product donated to them so that they can prepare their "review." Most such reviews use facts and phrases copied from the manufacturer's web site. I have yet to see such a blog speak negatively about the product being reviewed. Frankly, these blogs are a waste of time for a reader seeking honest opinions.

3.            Shopping reviews:

Blogs and sites for shopper reviews, including sites such as Amazon.com, which allow persons to present their "reviews" of a product and provide a rating. Although there can be some honest reviews, these sites are frequently used by manufacturers and sellers to either

a.            Illegitimately promote their product, by having numerous accounts and other persons over whom they have influence, frequently referred to as touts and shills, give glowing reviews for their product, and give it a higher rating in the eyes of the unknowing public.

b.            Illegitimately bad-mouth competitive products, by having touts and shills give negative opinions and make the product have a lower rating in the eyes of the unknowing public. This is particularly evident when a new product is introduced which has competitors concerned. There will be numerous negative "reviews" from persons who have not and even could not have obtained the product or had any experience with it. Also, some "reviewers" reviews are blatantly false and even unbelievably stupid, but as long as the responsible people at Amazon (and elsewhere) feel that it follows their broad guidelines for product reviews they will let these absurd reviews remain. I suspect that there must actually be people "out there" who will do this consistently, including owners and employees at some businesses.

Conclusion about sites:

The manufacturers site is undoubtedly the best source for accurate information. Product reviews by third parties, including seller sites such as Amazon are prone to substantial abuse by illicit persons. This does not mean that all manufacturers sites are deceit free.

As an excellent example of how manufacturers can deceive their public through deceitful web sites, I discovered this unbelievably good and illustrative site,
 

http://bedwettingalarmsdeceitcatcher.blogspot.com/

in which the author(s) do a great job of disassembling the web sites of almost every prominent manufacturer in the bedwetting alarm industry, and point out where and how the manufacturer may have been deceitful on its site. I realize that this is a small industry, but this site can set an example for other concerned and ethical persons to look at other industries and publicly expose deceitful practices or advertising.

Keep up the great work Deceit Catcher! Great name and excellent site. I would recommend that all persons interested in deceit in the bedwetting alarm industry or deceit on the internet to read it.