HarleyBestfield's comments

This is only the most recent attempt. It was proceeded by a successful publication of the exact same article to mainspace, but it was removed because the account used to create it was linked to a previous blocked sock.

If you review the history of the article proper, you'll see a history of creation and deletions. There are also past attempts in Italian, Japanese, and Simple English.

If you use COIBot reports to search for his various domains, you'll find Wikipedia is littered with his activity.

I am. Equifax should cease to exist for the breach.

Directly? No. I'll explain why.

There is a prominent programming competition which was operated by the ACM for many years. If you find the Italian language version of the article on Wikipedia, check the very first edit from 2012. He was the IP editor who created the article.

With that information, you can search for a current draft article on the English website. Again, the IP editor is him. This opens up information about some of his current websites posing as official websites. These websites include claims about him being a consulate, a knighted individual, defamatory articles targeting people who called out his shady political campaign in 2018, and his false claims to a particular academic pedigree.

Should that draft article disappear, you can simply find archived versions of the most recent version using popular web archival tools.

Dig for articles about his 2018 political campaign in the country matching the first language mention above and which deals with gratis "flights".

If you dig enough, you'll find links back to an article in a prominent magazine in that country. The article does not exist on the magazine's website, but you can use the URL to find archives using popular web archival tools.

Take that journalist's name and search for "blog". That's his defamatory website for her. It's just the tip of the iceberg of his attack on her.

This is one of six current defamatory websites that I know about targeting specific individuals and/or organizations which are operated by him. This doesn't include the prior existing websites, outside articles, or fake reviews.

I'm not interested in becoming one of his targets.

"Community members have addressed concerns of this sort for many years, but sometimes volunteers who intervene in such cases may themselves face retaliation for their actions..."

This is why I stopped contributing.

There is a particular person whom I encountered who'd been using Wikipedia for several years to praise himself and defame others. This includes Wikipedia editors, journalists, politicians, and academic institutions.

If he took a particular interest in you or your organization, he would create websites defaming you. He would do this while trying to clean up reports about his behavior across the Web and in the media.

I spent a couple of years tracking his behavior across the Web, archiving things, and developing of profile of him and his behavior. I finally decided to call it quits because I was concerned that I'd end up as a direct target.

I also stopped editing Wikipedia to ensure that our paths would not cross again.

This is definitely not Wikimedia's fault. He's developed an increasingly sophisticated approach to avoiding detection like using rented residential IPs, mobile devices from other countries, numerous sock accounts, and more. In the end, it simply wasn't worth it to me.

I welcome this. Google simply has too much control over this area.

Case: I work for a small, family owned business. It does home remodeling. A large part of how the company generates leads is through the website and Google Business profile (or Google Maps listing).

The business currently ranks well, but there is a growing threat from marketing firms.

This is not a problem with competitors hiring marketing firms. It's marketing firms or solo marketing "gurus" who setup websites for each city in the metro area and a matching Google Business profile. These profiles are often setup through reaching out to local residents who'll accept Google's postcard verification for a new listing at their home address. In return for providing the marketer with the code, the resident gets a small fee.

Once the website and listing start ranking, the marketer tries to get local contractors to buy the leads from them.

This scheme is known as "rank and rent" in some circles (read: among shady marketers).

These actors add no value. It's for this reason that Google explicitly forbids this activity in its Google Business profile listings.

However, go about reporting such profiles, nothing happens.

I welcome a break of the monopoly so that Google and others will start taking more action on shady marketing tactics.

Let me stress you more. I use a mid-2010 iMac as a daily driver. It still uses the original spinning disk hardware with more than 77000 Power_On_Hours. SMART says Old_age.

I like living dangerously.

It stopped being helpful a while ago. It's now moved into being harmful.

A popular scheme among shady SEOs and marketers is "rank and rent." This is where they choose a major city and a common contracting service (eg, plumbing, carpet cleaning, fence building, home remodeling, etc.).

Then they register domains using generic search terms. They build a website presenting itself as an independent local business. They even go as far as lying on the about us pages claiming years of experience.

They create content on the site, social media profiles, and business listings.

When the site begins to rank well enough to generate leads, they either rent the website to a local contractor and/or sell them the leads.

It sounds helpful, but it's shady. First, they're usually competing with the local contractors for search space. Second, they usually rely heavily on fake Google Business Profiles.

While the latter practice violates Google's guidelines, getting them removed is tough. That's because they pay local residents to "borrow" their home addresses. This allows them to get the verification code sent out by Google to verify addresses.

For our family business, we've even had them report our Google Business Profile on several occasions because we were outranking them. Then they had the gaul to try and rent one of their websites to us.

In the end, the practice is harmful to local contractors and customers who don't realize they going through a middle man.