How was the consumer's private information obtained? After posting a negative review anonymously, the merchant contacted the customer and asked him to delete the negative review...
2024-08-07
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(Food delivery platform) The backend is not anonymous
Writing a review?
I don't know who wrote the bad review.
Later when he called me
Just say: "Hello, Ms. Wang."
After the customer gave a bad review,
Frequent calls from merchants asking them to delete negative reviews
Li Bing (pseudonym), 28, works in Gongshu District, Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province. He often orders takeout due to his busy work. One day, the fried chicken he ordered was undercooked and had blood streaks, so he took a photo of the fried chicken and posted it on the platform, giving it a one-star rating. In addition to posting the rating, Li Bing also left a message on the platform, expressing his dissatisfaction with the product.
On the afternoon of the day after Li Bing gave the bad review, the merchant called back. The merchant insisted that the bad review be deleted, saying it was damaging the business. After Li Bing resolutely hung up the phone, the merchant did not give up and continued to call him several times, initially putting pressure on him by saying that the business was in trouble. Later, the lady boss personally apologized and promised to improve, and also offered to give him 20 yuan as compensation.
Faced with the merchant's change in attitude and compensation measures, Li Bing originally insisted on not deleting it, but the other party apologized, paid compensation and promised to improve service in the future. In the end, he deleted the bad review.
Wang Nan (pseudonym), who works in a shopping mall, also encountered a similar situation. She ordered a stir-fried pork dish on a takeaway platform, and found a toothpick in the dish halfway through eating, so she gave a negative review anonymously. Then she received a call from the merchant asking her to delete the negative review. Faced with the merchant's insincere apology attitude and handling method, Wang Nan did not delete the negative review. At the same time, Wang Nan felt uneasy that the merchant was able to contact her even though she gave the negative review anonymously.
After receiving relevant clues, the police launched an investigation and found that there were hundreds of consumers implicated in the urban area of Hangzhou alone, and the routines encountered by everyone were exactly the same. The police found these businesses, and these businesses said that they all bought a service to delete negative reviews. These service providers also named themselves "professional negative review editors." They asked customers to delete negative reviews by crying poor, playing the victim, and giving red envelopes.
Merchants purchase negative review deletion services to get high ratings
The fried chicken shop that Li Bing gave a bad review to is run by Mr. Xu, whose takeout orders account for 80% of the shop's turnover. In order to attract customers and increase traffic, Mr. Xu spent 900 yuan to buy a package to delete 30 bad reviews after receiving a sales call for the service. In the eyes of merchants, the score of a store is related to the traffic pushed by the platform, and a high score will bring high traffic and good revenue.
Under the guidance of the other party, Mr. Xu provided the merchant user name and login password of the food delivery platform, and then the team operated on their own. When bad reviews appeared on the platform, the team would frequently contact the customers who gave bad reviews and ask them to delete the reviews. Since entrusting the team with full authority to handle bad reviews, Mr. Xu's fried chicken shop's score on a food delivery platform quickly rose from 4.4 to 4.6.
A similar situation also occurred in a cake shop not far from Mr. Xu's fried chicken shop. The owner also purchased a negative review deletion service to improve the rating. The cake shop owner said that this service is almost an open secret in the catering industry, and merchants have changed from comparing products to ratings.
Thanks to the operation of these "professional bad review editors", some stores even have all good reviews. Some "bad review editors" may first post bad reviews and then promote the deletion service, further disrupting the market. The staff of the Hangzhou Gongshu District Market Supervision and Administration Bureau believes that the paid posting of good reviews and paid deletion of bad reviews in this case are already unfair competition.
Anonymous evaluation, how to obtain customer information?
When the food delivery review platform was first designed, it strictly protected the relevant system data and personal information. When the order was in progress, the numbers of the deliveryman, the merchant, and the customer were all virtual. The customer's comments on the platform were also presented anonymously. However, the team that deleted the negative reviews could accurately know the identity and contact information of the customer who gave the negative review.
In fact, these criminals used special means to illegally obtain computer information system data to obtain consumers' private information. On the one hand, they obtained bulk information of takeout customers, including customer names, virtual phone numbers, contact addresses, etc. On the other hand, they stole the information of customers who gave bad reviews in bulk, matched and pieced together the information of the two, and were able to accurately find the poster of the bad reviews through phone calls and other means.
The police unraveled the mystery through clues such as the merchant’s contact information and payment methods, and locked in on an information technology company that specializes in providing merchants with a service to delete negative reviews.
In March 2024, police officers from the Gongshu District Branch of the Hangzhou Public Security Bureau in Zhejiang Province arrested the gang. According to police statistics, from January 2023 to early 2024, the company's illegal sales of negative review deletion services involved Jiangsu, Anhui, Zhejiang and other places, with illegal sales amounting to more than 4 million yuan. At present, the case is still being further processed.
Legal education time
Q1：
What adverse effects will the behavior of criminals deleting negative reviews have on businesses, consumers and the market?
A1：
The review platform is a bridge of communication between consumers and businesses. An effective bridge can not only enable businesses to provide better services, but also provide reference for consumers. If negative reviews are deleted, it will affect the effectiveness of the communication channel to a certain extent, which will not only distort the displayed reviews, but also affect fair competition in the market to a certain extent. In other words, some businesses will blindly rely on the service of deleting negative reviews to maintain their positive reviews. Those businesses that operate in good faith will be at a disadvantage. In the long run, the phenomenon of "bad money driving out good money" will appear in the market, and the impact will be multifaceted.
Q2：
The criminal gang involved in the case has already taken shape, and the act of deleting negative reviews has affected multiple provinces and cities. How can this behavior be regulated legally?
A2：
From the perspective of their behavior, their behavior may be suspected of illegal intrusion into computer information systems. This crime is to break into the computer information system by technical means to destroy the protection. In addition, they also match the obtained personal information and finally obtain the corresponding data. From the perspective of the object of the behavior, they illegally obtain the name, address, telephone number and other identity information of others by invading the computer system. In other words, their behavior violates the personal information of citizens. Since citizens' personal electronic information exists in the form of computer information system data, this case may be suspected of illegal intrusion into computer information systems.
Q3：
In order to prevent such cases from happening, what kind of countermeasures should be taken?
A3：
At the legislative level, relevant laws and regulations should be revised and improved. At the regulatory level, regulatory efforts should be strengthened. From the perspective of the platform, the platform should also continuously upgrade its technology, such as adopting more advanced algorithms. The reputation that truly reassures consumers is the reputation that has both good and bad reviews. Therefore, the most important thing is that merchants must operate with integrity. Only in this way can merchants continuously improve the quality of their products and form a mechanism for long-term development.
Case source | "Today's Statement" program "Professionally Deleting Negative Reviews"
Reporter | Li Jian Li Shaopeng
Source: CCTV Today's Statement
