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Blackmailed on a Sunday. Yesterday was a first. I woke up yesterday morning to a string of notifications on my phone. Ten one-start reviews on our Google My Business profile. Prior to that, we had eleven total reviews. All five stars. This brought us down to a 3.1-star company on Google My Business. I was distraught. But the reviews made no sense. One person complained about the food being cold. We’re a marketing agency. We don’t serve food. Another complained that the product they ordered never arrived. We don’t sell products. The most recent review said it all. “My brother,my WhatsApp number are in my profile DP. You should contact me so that we can remove all these comments.” This person attacked our Google My Business profile and tried to get us to pay them off. For anyone dealing with a similar issue, here’s how to eliminate fake reviews like this: Open up your Google My Business account. Click on any of the reviews in question and select “report review”. Google offers a variety of options ranging from “low quality information” to “discrimination or hate speech.” At the bottom of the page, you’ll see another option to report a legal issue. Click the legal issue option and Google will ask you to provide more information. Link to the review(s) in question and fill out the snippet below with more context into why you’re reporting the review. Google got back to us within 12 hours, confirming that these reviews had been removed. In other words, don’t give in to these kinds of schemes.
Wild. Glad you got that resolved so quickly’
This happened to us as well last year. The key is not to panic and follow Google's reporting process exactly. They're quite good at removing these fraudulent reviews once you provide the evidence properly. Never engage with the blackmailers directly.
The response time is really surprising and i am impressed. My experience, similar to this one but on Amazon was different. Amazon takes long time to act. However, they acted and removed those reviews.
In my private security consultations with people caught in blackmail schemes like this, one rule has always held true: never give in. These operations rely on businesses taking the “easy” way out -> paying <- because fighting back seems more difficult than it is. But once you push through the proper channels or even the improper ones, the false allegations and blackmail usually collapses. No bad actor will risk their entire operation over a single target.
What a way to spend your Sunday! I'm sorry that happened to you but happy Google got it sorted for you so quickly. Thanks for sharing.
Along with this there are companies who hire people to do fake 5 star rating and write good reviews on Google. It seems so obvious and I just ignore those brands.
Ha Haa, you've found a way to generate engagement, and that's all LinkedIn's algorithm cares about. I'm sure you are aware that a post like this will get a lot of people expressing their opinions, especially those who take pride in their content writing. My hat off to you for gaming the algorithm 😊
I've helped clients with this type of thing before and it's the worst. Half the time they don't even know they are being extorted because the emails are in the junk folder. I like to tell them that our company needs an invoice submitted so we can properly process the payment and then send them a pentesting tracking link. You'd be surprised how infrequent security hygiene is practiced when they think they're securing funds and that how they've obfuscated their identity via email is enough. Many times it comes from mixed locations that can be a litigation nightmare for true legal process. So through this means, we play a little hardball and gain some leverage on behalf of the client where we can. I then submit the evidence in the case as part of my escalation. Simply identifying that they aren't local to the client's business can be sufficient. If anyone needs guidance on that, happy to help! It's not a long winded pitch or anything. I despise this type of activity and would help anyone that needs it.
This is great to know, I've just started my business and have gotten Google Reviews up and running. It's pretty darn important to have a good standing there, so nice to know Google can help with the mischief.
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1wHave to say you were extremely lucky to have them removed…normally ask you for all the information under the sun then tell you they don’t go against their guidelines.