That's sort of impressive though they're willing to stalk and murder people and sit in jail to protect their clients, when their clients didn't ask them to. Sort of like gee, I just wanted that "Slap_mc sux in bed" pushed down the index is all...

@MrEvil:

I'd have to say human, looking at the spelling errors and mistyping...unless they program a bot to do that, to make it seem more human.

"dangerous cat behavior"!!
I read this ten mins ago and I'm still laughing...you guys slay me :)

That was hilarious. Invisible Bike! LMAO!

I think reading their reaction from that would be hilarious.

"Kelly: for that you ahve tu discuss with my manager"

Very professional.

@picshereplz:
people have been promoting their own webpages for years. there's nothing malicious about it, unless you're trying to slander someone.

Oh boy haha

Can we has complaintremover remover? Anyone?

And here I thought the Google was self-righting, that the sites at the top of the list were the most visited, not the most referred to....

Hello, My name is Kelly. Is there something I can help you with today?
CLIENT: Hi I am having a problem with internet postings about my company we manufacture toys and some of the new product was tainted with lead
CLIENT: not much
CLIENT: but enough for people to get worry and start posting bad stuff about us on the internet
Kelly: hy
Kelly: what kind of bad stuff?
CLIENT: We dont want our customers to know about the lead is there anyway we can get rid of the links
CLIENT: oh you know
CLIENT: "(blank) companys toys have lead in them"
CLIENT: its true but we dont want our customers to know about it
CLIENT: So anyway we can keep this lead thing hush hush
Kelly: i see...
Kelly: can you provide me more information?
CLIENT: well really I dont want to say too much at this point its a sensitive topic
CLIENT: I am just wondering if what I am asking would be possible
Kelly: an what is your company name?
CLIENT: I have been instructed not to give that out untill I know if you guys can help
Kelly: by consumerit?
Kelly: consumerist.com
CLIENT: I have bever heard of them
CLIENT: never*
CLIENT: who is that?
Kelly: yeah sure...
CLIENT: well if you are going to take that tone
CLIENT: I am afraid I will have to take my buisness else where
CLIENT: thank you

dang they're on to us boys

What these people are doing is legal and ethical insofar as Google ads themselves are.

Retarded, and hilarious that you effed with it, but come on. Some of us are starting to sound like a certain Walter Sobchek.

For full details, read [news.com.com]

"I'm in ur surch enginz pushen ur bad internetz down."

They're not CSR, they're bots by the Chinese to extend censorship.

client: So you can remove or lower the pageranking of sites that are defamatory toward my company?
CR: Yes sir we can easily do that.
client: Excellent, there is a group that are making libelous and infamatory statements about my website directly impacting my ability to do business..
CR: whats the name of your website?
client: www.atheistsunite.com
CR: ...and whats the name of the website making the statements?
client: www.vatican.va, there's a lot of defamatory information on there that casts atheists in a bad light.
CR: not a problem sir, we can get their pages deranked fast any other questions?
client: besides wondering how you are able to sleep at night, nope...

No one is harassing the CSR. They are merely making jokes about the company they work for. Surely, your years of experience as a CSR taught you that.

Oh, I don't know. I can't really say whether the goals and methods of complaintremover.com are legit, but I can see a niche to be filled whereby a firm can help remove libelous commentaries posted to the 'net, like if somebody said "the service this website offers seeks to hamper free speech" but had no proof whatsoever to substantiate this statement.

I think the proof that it had been pretty much run into the ground as soon as it hit the mainstream is that the images that still really seriously make the rounds are the ones which were popular before that fucking site came into being.

I think they're Chinese:

Domain Name: COMPLAINTREMOVER.COM

Registrar: TODAYNIC.COM, INC.

Whois Server: whois.todaynic.com

Referral URL: [www.NOW.CN]

Name Server: NS1.TRUEDOMAINSECURITY.COM

Name Server: NS2.TRUEDOMAINSECURITY.COM

Status: clientTransferProhibited

Updated Date: 29-feb-2008

Creation Date: 29-jul-2006

Expiration Date: 29-jul-2009

If you go to todaynic.com / now.cn are both chinese domain registering sites. Maybe someone can ask them

complaintremover.com -> 66.132.144.22

66.132.144.22 is from United States(US) in region North America

whois query for 66.132.144.22...

Results returned from whois.arin.net:

OrgName: Peer 1 Dedicated Hosting

OrgID: P1DH-1

Address: 101 Marietta Street

Address: Suite 500

City: Atlanta

StateProv: GA

PostalCode: 30303

Country: US

Now time to try and get a phone number for the lulz.

great article lol

Fascism operates by co-opting liberties with the cooperation of non-governmental agencies or by the government failing to protect civil liberties. Free speech is a human right, not just a constitutional right and may only be abridged by due legal process, and only then in the case of libel/slander or imminent harm. So long as we have the option to ignore it, we must protect it.

I can certainly see how letters like this will do nothing but good things for one's PR.

[www.news.com]

We warned you ed magedson. Did you hear the gun shots last night? Because of you innocent people will die. Your tenants, family members and those that work with you. Think we're joking? I told you that your site will be down and it is. That is all we want and we will not hurt anyone.

If ripoff report moves again to new hosting facilities you will not like what we will do next. Your home will burn. Those around you will burn. Do not expect any help from the police.

Once you have completed with our first list we demand you remove we will give you another list on Saturday and every Saturday from this day forward and you will have 6 hours to do the same from the time we give you that list on each and every Saturday. If the Links work after the 6 there will be a man hunt for you.

We know where you shop. We know where you bank. Greenfield and Broadway, Greenfield and Main. Are we getting closer ED? What about Basha's at Higley and Brown?

Excerpt of death threat below:

This letter is being sent to you in the name of more than 500 businesses. No matter where you go, we will cause you a problem. Your life is in danger until you comply with our demands. This is your last warning.

Your neighbors already know about your criminal dealings and how you are making many people loose (sic) their business. You will soon be beaten to a pulp and pounced into the ground six feet under with a baseball bat and sleg (sic) hammer. You will soon be sorry not just from what I am capable of doing to you, but what other members will do as soon as they know exactly where you are. Its (sic) just a matter of time until I get to you.

Here is what you can do to save your life. But you must act imidiatly (sic). Make what ever deal it takes, you must comply.

@noquarter: It is a first amendment issue, and the clowns offering the "service" don't believe in it, and neither do their clients.

Anyone who would use that "service" isn't interested in silencing libel, their interested in silencing valid criticism. Those who have tried to sue negative posters in the past (e.g. investment services) have lost when the criticism was found valid and the poster not profiting from such comments; libelers and illegal traders lost such cases.

The court being involved in defamation suits does not automatically make those suits first amendment cases.

this is so crazy I am fully banned now oh well it was fun while it lasted remember the rick roll is your friend

If you get banned just go here [www.complaintremover.com] and let the good times roll

Since LOLCats was only funny for about a week, and now that the unwashed internet masses have taken hold of it, it has become stale and annoying super fast.

@picshereplz:

"the First Amendment only applies as against government action."

Yes, and these nitwits are busy asking the courts to step in and violate it.

I just rick rolled them :) my connection got lost before I could save the text. this is the most fun I have had in a long time.

this company's website claims that they will pursue legal options to "remove" negative links from the web. if true, that means that this company will use state and federal government instruments to carry out these suits. that automatically causes the First Amendment to be applicable. any judge worth their salt is not going to agree with a suit asking for restrictions on specific speech without asking some very tough questions. what this service is selling is, well, very questionable and can run into conflict with the First Amendment in a lot of ways.

lol.

i love the intertubes.

They seem to suck at what they do...

If you google "complaintremover", first link is to Boing Boing, third link is to a comment about an injunction against them. But the other links show exactly what their SEO tactics are: to create a bunch of worthless spam pages on random sites such as StudioAtHome.com, Quantcast.com, etc. Completely destroys the purpose if your useful link is buried under all of their spam links.

P.S. this article is the 5th hit if you google "complaint remover" (with a space) :-)
Way to go, Consumerist!

"So you like make new internets and push the bad internets down" --- classic. I LOL'd repeatedly.

However once a site hits a certain amount of traffic or back links I have doubts that this will have any effect.

For example it is unlikely they could prevents a message on consumerist or a story on abcnews.

I think the jig is up boys. They're onto us! :)

Hello, My name is JamieB. Is there something I can help you with today?
CLIENT: I'm trying to understand what it is you do.
JamieB: We are in the bussiness of removing negative information from search engines
CLIENT: Really, and how so?
JamieB: Do you have bad links in search engines?
CLIENT: Could you re-phrase that? I'm not great at deciphering bad grammer.
JamieB: If you search for your name(or your company name) in google, yahoo, msn or other search engines and a negative link will shown we can remove that by posting positive content about you on higher ranked sites than the negative one , by doing that the negative link will be pushed away in the back of all major search engines where nobody is looking
JamieB: this is what we do
CLIENT: How do you know that absolutely no one is looking? Someone could be bored.
JamieB: Do you need our services?
CLIENT: Ok so if I'm from WalMart, and Kmart is writing crap about me, you can make them go away?
JamieB: yes
CLIENT: for good? like abolish Kmart completely?
CLIENT: ?
CLIENT: or are you too overwhelmed with the LOLcats?
Connect Lost!

If they're using the courts to try to get words taken down, doesn't that make it a first amendment issue?
@noquarter:

No, it makes it a civil action which is governed by caselaw. The first amendment applies when the government is suing you.

Let's not forget about the 9th amendment which contains privacy concerns as well....there are a lot of other amendments out there to trash....any takers?

Anyway, I think it's a real person (though her/his English skills are in question).

Lea Schurz
ComplaintRemover.com
info@ccomplaintremover.com
PO 893
Tilden, texas 68781 US
512 3254587

Today, it has:

Name: Andrea Schurz
Organization: none
Address: X-X8 Redatsky Strasse
City: Klagenfurt
Country: AT
Postal Code: 9020
Phone: +011.2072216162
Fax: +011.2072216162
Email: sales@embeddedchat.com

and yes, embeddedchat.com are spamming too; do a Google search for "embeddedchat.com ROKSO".

FIRST BASE!!!! You win the thread sir!

It is however a free speech issue. Free speech is one of the foundational values around which the US society is organized. Because free speech is so important it has shaped how the legal systems handles actions that are just attempts to silence someone. In this case, trying to game Google is not an infringement of free speech but bringing up legal threats is unlikely to be successful precisely because the mere fact that "they are saying negative things about us" is not sufficient. The statements have to be negative and untrue. It is precisely because of free speech that a defamation suit would likely be unsuccessful. I'm not saying that a judge would give "free speech" as the rationale to dismiss the suit but that the legal tests that a defamation suit have to pass have been shaped by a belief that free speech is desirable in a free society.

I mean, if you just want to make money off of suckers without doing any real work.

Hello, My name is Kelly. Is there something I can help you with today?
CLIENT: Hi. I'd like to remove a site from the web.
Kelly: hi
Kelly: are you the owner of the site?
CLIENT: No.
CLIENT: Otherwise, I'd just remove it myself.
CLIENT: It's hurting my buisness.
Kelly: nobody can remove the site just the owner..
Kelly: but
Kelly: we can push thos links backk in serch engines
CLIENT: Well, I want it knocked down lower on the search engines.
Kelly: so nobody will se those
CLIENT: Yeah. That's what I mean
Kelly: soo what shoud i search?
Kelly: too see that negative links
CLIENT: How about "Remove Negative Links"
CLIENT: the site name is complaintremover.com
Kelly: yes
CLIENT: So how much to push that site lower?
Kelly: give me your keywords please
CLIENT: Try "Remove Negative Links"
Kelly: yes
CLIENT: Yes
CLIENT: How much?
Kelly: what about?
CLIENT: What about what?
CLIENT: First base... LOL
CLIENT: Get it?
You are banned to this site by operator Kelly. Reason: No reason.
Connection lost!

fwiw, suing someone for defamation (one private party against another) is very rarely successful, mostly because the courts cite potential damage to, oh, what's that thing? The First Amendment.

It is absolutely true that the Bill of Rights applies only to government actors, but the second a private party tries to get a government actor to enforce their own actions, it could be a Constitutional issue.

I just had the following wonderful exchange...

Hello, My name is JamieB. Is there something I can help you with today?
CLIENT: I'm scared of some of the things I see on the internet.
JamieB: well, there are some scaring things
JamieB: but our business here is to remove any negative information that you might have
CLIENT: Like pictures of people hitting other people with sticks and stuff. Violence, and things like that. Some people want to hit me with sticks, and bad comments.
JamieB: so, you have negative information posted about you on the internet?
JamieB: we can help you remove those things
CLIENT: I am a Nigerian scam artist, and people don't like us. Can you make everyone believe they won $800,000 and I'm a barrister?
JamieB: no, we can't do that
CLIENT: It would be sooooo keen if you can help me with that.
CLIENT: Okay. I don't want to waste your time.
JamieB: i'm sorry, we only remove negative information
CLIENT: But I would like you to know that you just won $850,000 in the European lottery.
CLIENT: Or the Heineken contest, or something equally wonderful.
CLIENT: Okay, well bye, then. You have a bright future, because there's lots of negative stuff on the old internets.

Kelly types like a LOLcat.

@rkmc12:

Excepting that if we allow these businesses to propagate, the government will start contracting them.

Hey, it isn't a constitutional breach! The government isn't establishing a law or restricting anything, they'd just be paying a bill for a provided service.

that's much more economical than, you know, actually working to keep a positive image of your company.

Cmon.. This is simple. If you have bad information popping up on page 1 they simple start attaching your company name to more popular sites. They smack your listing on the popular directories like superpages. They get a press release of yours linked to cnn or yahoo.

Do. Not. Want. Stop. LOLz. Iz be cryn is so funny. Is jeanish Ben. Jeanish.

I can haz negatiif commentz remooved?

I can see how companies would want to remove negative info, but tough for them.

A good example is [www.montereyfinancial.com]

I bought something from a company who uses this financing company. (i didn't even know they would outsource it) As soon as I googled them to find where to send a payment i see articles from pissed off consumers and articles from "rip off report.com"

It immediately gave me a negative view of this company to see so many bad comments and websites.

but again - tough for them. knowledge is power.

consumerist against lolcats! I though we loved those cats here! And if you won blog of the year, you would had cats all day long. Tax cat cries in a corner

Or just have this story linked everywhere and digged. Later rinse repeat.

Pays the same either way.

I wouldn't want to be a CSR for this company. Not that I'd want to be a CSR for any comapny.

Too funny, I bet Kelly is a bot too. I'm kind of curious though, how much do they charge to shit on the first amendment?

The story I was trying to remember: [consumerist.com]

Can we get a Digg on this, so I can Digg it? 'Cause I dig it.

CLIENT: now when you guys say you replace negative information with positive do I need to supply it or do you just make it up?
JamieB: it's better if you can supply iy
JamieB: it
CLIENT: but if I cant you would make it up?
JamieB: we will find something to work with

...by appeals to law to remove negative information. We send cease and desist letters and if necessary, file legal actions against the perpetrators and Internet service providers contributing to the unjust defamation of our members

If they're using the courts to try to get words taken down, doesn't that make it a first amendment issue?

Wow, this just boggles my mind in so many ways. First of all, this was just awesome, awesome, awesome. I love the way you guys did this - getting info, giving crap, and making us laugh all at the same time. Second, Manipulating search results really pisses Google off, from what I understand. I wonder what their official opinion of this company's actions is. Third, this is PR gone insane, just the concept of a company doing that - It just shows that some companies would rather manipulate public opinion instead of address and improve issues and problems within their company. Sad sign of the times, all around!

Here is my little chat with them,

Hello, My name is JamieB. Is there something I can help you with today?
CLIENT: I was wondering what legal authority you have to remove links from search engines
JamieB: Do you have bad links in search engines?
JamieB: its legal what we do
CLIENT: How exactly
CLIENT: The last time I checked the internet was a free place
JamieB: if you search for your name(or your company name) in google, yahoo, msn or other search engines and a negative link will shown we can remove that by posting positive content about you on higher ranked sites than the negative one , by doing that the negative link will be pushed away in the back of all major search engines where nobody is looking
JamieB: this is what we do
CLIENT: But couldent that bury negitive information that could be helpful to a consumer like about a recall or dangerous parts in a product?
JamieB: nobody will bury negative info from search negative
CLIENT: Excuse me?
JamieB: nobody will delete negative info from search negative
CLIENT: thats true but if my company gets horrible reveiws but I dont want anyone to see them I could pay you to blast those to the bottom of the search so if someone just searched the name of my company they would only see sunshine and rainbows correct?
JamieB: correct
CLIENT: that seems rather shady to me

She then told me to hand out my phone number so a manager could call me I said no thanks.

MOTHS! It takes MOTHS to fight LOLCats!

One of the great things about the web is that it gives us access to information. It allows us to seek the truth and be powerful consumers. What would happen if every company with "negative information" here on Consumerist was able to rip that information from our view?

I hope nobody invested too much money into this, besides, you can't stop the lolcats.

Here's a novel idea, how about provide excellent customer service so your customers WANT to say good things about you? I'll be willing to bet it's cheaper than paying some shady SEO firm.

$10 says Kelly doesn't actually exist. That conversation looks like a conversation with a bot.

What's with the screechy, sensationalist take on things here of late?

The hilarious idea of finding out how much money a sleazy company would charge to have some image macros removed from the internets is kind of diminished by the First Amendment hurf blurfing.

Also, that embeddedchat thing is creepy.

Kelly looks a little like a long haired Kevin Bacon.

I really like that.

Hmm...wonder if anyone's saying anything bad about my site...this service could be useful. If not evil.

@picshereplz: While, you're correct that it only applies against government action...we don't exactly need to make it easier for the government by tacitly approving the same behavior for private businesses that we deplore from our elected business.

And no, it's not a First Amendment issue, but sending cease and desist letters to scare off people who have legitimate claims is pretty sleazy.

Congress, and the government, are not in charge of Complaint Remover. Private companies and private individuals are pretty much welcome to limit free speech, even as that's part of their free speech.

Now if Congress or your various local governments were doing this, then there's a big issue. But a company...you may not like it, but it's not against the 1st amendment, because they aren't government.

bwahahahahahaha
bwahahahahahaha
bwahahahahahaha

this is what i love about the consumerist :-)

Kelly is going to be having a very bad day today :-)

By the way, the First Amendment only applies as against government action.