
Ask HN: An SEO startup is impersonating a physician. What should I do? - iharris
Background: My wife works as an administrator at a Canadian cosmetic surgery clinic. The physician, Dr. C., is quite successful and is ranked #1 in our city on sites like RateMD.<p>Yesterday, she was cold-called by an SEO startup in an attempt to sell her a revamped website and SEO services. He said they had already designed a placeholder website, and that he would personalize it for them if the clinic would purchase their services. She politely refused.<p>Out of curiosity, her colleague, J, called the phone number on this fictional web site. J pretended to be a potential client and asked to schedule a consultation. The other party said &quot;The doctor is currently busy; I&#x27;ll check with him and call you back.&quot; J asked which physician she would be seeing. He gave her the name of Dr. C (the physician at J&#x27;s clinic!) along with his background and credentials (gleaned from the bio on Dr. C&#x27;s website). When pressed for the clinic&#x27;s location, they gave J a (fake) address in Chinatown.<p>My wife then called the SEO company to complain that they seemed to be impersonating a legitimate clinic in order to sell SEO services (she did not mention J&#x27;s call). The person she spoke to (listed as one of co-founders) became very rude. He denied that they were doing anything wrong and huffed that &quot;If you don&#x27;t want to grow your Web presence then we don&#x27;t want your business!&quot;<p>I believe that this is an attempted &quot;growth hack&quot; and not an outright scam, but they are taking it too far. Using a real physician&#x27;s identity, even in a placeholder website, can damage his reputation, not to mention displacing him as #1 in Google search results for our city.<p>HN, do you have any thoughts on what action my wife can take to stop this behavior?<p>Update 1: Interestingly, the fake clinic domain name is VERY similar (one letter difference) to another, legitimate clinic in the city.<p>Update 2: Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons is in contact with wife&#x27;s clinic. Preparing to unleash the hounds, no doubt.
======
davismwfl
Your wife (or someone) should report it to the professional license/medical
board, basically whomever handles licensing and advertising for professionals
in Canada. Not even so much to attack the SEO company, but to protect the
Physician should a complaint ever be lodged against him/her. Doing so will
likely also start an investigation though, so it will work out.

You may be right that the SEO company is trying to do a growth hack, but that
doesn't alleviate them of the responsibility to not break the law. In the US
you can get into some decent trouble doing that crap. You might get away with
it once or twice claiming ignorance to the standards on registered
professionals in a state but I doubt you get away with it long once someone
reports you.

Also, I personally wouldn't name anyone publicly here, it just doesn't seem
like a good idea. However, sending an email to the SEO company seems
reasonable.

------
wesleytodd
Agreed that you should have your lawyer contact them with a threatening email.
Also, you could have a friend "hire" them for some small service just to get
their information. Then provide that to your lawyer to pursue more substantial
legal measures.

<rant> My experience with SEO companies has been horrible.

I worked for one for a month, have worked with them in the past at agencies I
have worked at, and was given a list of "optimizations" from one a the startup
I currently work for.

My experience while working for one is, by far, the worst. The owner/CEO asked
me to lie to a customer and tell them I did work that he had actually
outsourced to India. "In the future, try to funnel these things through you.
Instead of saying, 'I will pass that on to the developer', say, 'I will take
care of that'".

I feel like their skills are hard to quantify, and because of this a lot of
people get sucked in on questionable sales pitches. This market then seems to
draw the "Snake Oil" type salesmen who find they can get easy money.

Although there are good people offering quality SEO services, I have had 100%
bad experiences with them. </rant>

~~~
BrainInAJar
SEO, as an industry, is shysters. Even "good" SEO is still a service designed
to break search engines. A scummy industry is going to attract scummy people,
it just becomes a question of to what degree they are scummy.

~~~
mod
I previously worked for a small design/development shop that ended up doing a
ton of SEO work and eventually pivoted to selling those ongoing services as a
large part of what they did.

It was in no way scummy, nor intended to break search engines.

Our approach to SEO was, in a nutshell: "write quality blog articles relevant
to related search terms, include a CTA at the end."

We posted lots and lots of articles. We started ranking very well for long-
tail keywords, which we should have--we had the best content available for
them.

Nothing scummy about that.

~~~
dropit_sphere
[https://xkcd.com/810/](https://xkcd.com/810/)

~~~
mod
Touche.

Paid well, at least.

------
JeremyMorgan
This is exactly why I got out of SEO services. I always did quality, white
hat, and ethical work and had a lot of great customers for a long time, and
they started getting eaten up by these idiots. Basically the story would be:

1\. I perform work for customer, they're satisfied. They would show
improvement and start getting more traffic.

2\. Some scam company company calls them and appeals to their sense of greed.

3\. They tell me they're going with the new company who erases everything I
did.

4\. Six months or so later they call me back because things are worse and want
me to fix it.

5\. I refuse because now they're deep in black hat territory, and either
deranked by Google or well on their way. Or they'd have some strange legal
issues popping up from the crap the other company did.

So yeah, after a while I jumped out of the business. I know that isn't exactly
relevant to your problem, but these companies are just complete scumbags in
every sense of the word, and anything you can do to damage them, you should.

Call a lawyer, and protect your good name. Take a chunk out of the bad guys.

~~~
jasonsync
No matter how good the SEO ... someone will always tell your client it's
horrible. And "prove it" with an SEO report card. And then no matter how much
good you did, your client will always have that thought in the back of their
mind that maybe it could be better.

Little do they realize it could be a lot worse.

Here's some of the crazy I see far too often:

\- SEO guys that run paid traffic through their client's affiliate programs,
to generate commission on top of the regular fees they charge.

\- SEO guys that offer a short-term contract initially to reel clients in, use
the initial fees to actually purchase products from said client's website, and
then use perceived increase in performance and revenue to get a long-term
contract paid up front, and then disappear.

\- SEO guys that charge for plagiarized blog content.

\- SEO guys that convince clients to pay thousands of dollars to add "meta
keywords" tags.

\- SEO guys that rewrite click farm traffic to make it look organic.

\- SEO guys that install "backdoors" on their client's hosting accounts to
continue monetizing the website via backlinks long after they've been "fired".

\- SEO guys that hold businesses hostage with duplicate websites (similar to
this story).

\- SEO guys with english-as-a-second-language, that charge for "Content
Marketing"

\- SEO guys that charge their clients thousands of dollars to setup and
maintain Facebook, Twitter, a Blog, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+, Tumblr,
then do nothing on them for years and hold their clients hostage for
additional fees when said clients realize they're not getting their money's
worth and want account access.

\- SEO guys that register the domain name and hosting on the "clients behalf"

~~~
djur
I encountered a variation of the 'backdoor' one. After the client commissioned
a new website without his sleazy backlink farm hidden, he tried to convince
the client that the new site would ruin their search engine rankings unless we
put his scripts back on. When rebuffed, he started making wild claims about
the new site being insecure (best example: "this nginx thing they use was made
by RUSSIAN HACKERS!"). Didn't work out great for him.

------
rcfox
Interesting... Recently my friend noticed a fake Twitter account under her
father's name. He's also doctor in Toronto.

The Twitter account is just repeating a Wordpress site's RSS feed. On that
site, there's a link to <his-name>.info, which according to a whois lookup was
registered by someone at the "International Association of Healthcare
Professionals" in New York. Google searches for that association reveal doubts
of legitimacy[0] and scam warnings[1][2].

I haven't spoken to my friend or her father about it directly (I just noticed
a tweet the other day) so I don't know if he was contacted about establishing
a web presence or anything.

[0]
[http://www.quackwatch.com/04ConsumerEducation/nonrecorg.html](http://www.quackwatch.com/04ConsumerEducation/nonrecorg.html)

[1] [http://www.ripoffreport.com/r/The-International-
Association-...](http://www.ripoffreport.com/r/The-International-Association-
of-Healthcare-Professionals/New-York-New-York-10022/The-International-
Association-of-Healthcare-Professionals-Scam-artists-stole-my-80795-c-1164526)

[2]
[http://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-877-447-8360](http://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-877-447-8360)

------
fleitz
Talk to a lawyer, practicing medicine with out a license comes immediately to
mind.

It looks like it might be covered under identity fraud:
[http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/westcoastnews/story....](http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/westcoastnews/story.html?id=0fb44a19-fdad-49a6-aa60-4caf943c8040)

May want to reach out to your local prosecutor and avoid those legal fees :)

Section 403 CCC: 403\. (1) Everyone commits an offence who fraudulently
personates another person, living or dead,

(a) with intent to gain advantage for themselves or another person;

(b) with intent to obtain any property or an interest in any property;

(c) with intent to cause disadvantage to the person being personated or
another person; or

(d) with intent to avoid arrest or prosecution or to obstruct, pervert or
defeat the course of justice.

Clarification

(2) For the purposes of subsection (1), personating a person includes
pretending to be the person or using the person’s identity information —
whether by itself or in combination with identity information pertaining to
any person — as if it pertains to the person using it.

Punishment

(3) Everyone who commits an offence under subsection (1)

(a) is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term
of not more than 10 years; or

(b) is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction.

------
iharris
Some good advice so far; thanks, everyone!

My wife is in contact with the College of Physicians and Surgeons to keep them
abreast of the situation. We'll see if she can engage their lawyers. She's
also documenting everything as it has happened.

I did a little bit of snooping through WHOIS records. I think the SEO company
is based in Montreal so we might be able to do something domestically about
it.

------
shiftpgdn
This is a pretty normal offshore scam these days. File a proper DMCA/phishing
complaint with their hosting provider & Google. File a phishing complaint with
their upstream phone provider.

All their shady SEO tactics will get them de-ranked in a few weeks regardless
of what you do so it's only a short term problem.

~~~
MichaelGG
Can you use DMCA for non copyright issues? Also, DMCA is a US thing, does it
apply in Canada?

------
johnsonmkj
Do everything that everyone else here has stated, but also watch out for other
things that they might fraudulently claim:

\- Local listings - make sure that the Google local listing, and other local
directories are showing the correct information, and that they didn't try to
change this

\- Social media accounts - What the scammy company would sell as "reputation
management." Verify that they are not creating accounts on all of the big
social media sites.

------
myself248
1: Lawyer.

2: Physicians' professional board may have advice.

3: Document the crap out of everything. When these scumbags hang, I want to
read about it in the Globe and Mail.

------
davemel37
I sympathize with OP but want to make Two corrections -

1\. It wasn't an SEO company, it was a Scam Artist impersonating an SEO
company... let's not throw out the baby with the bath water.

2\. It wasn't an attempted growth hack. It is a racket and should be called
that. In fact, every growth hacker out there will insist that "putting users
first" and "creating a sticky product" is growth hacking...not scamming
people.

------
mtmail
The company might do that to other people as well. Even if you find only 2-3
other people then a judge would see it as systematic fraud with higher
penalties.

I just hope the SEO company isn't hiding in another country.

------
sologoub
I've been seeing a good number of google maps listings hijacked by marketing
companies. One restaurant a co-worker of mine advises in her spare time
contracted a company that provides online food delivery lead gen. services
(similar to grubhub, but not them). They take a cut of every order.

The restaurant owner is a friend of my co-worker and asked her to help with
their website and local marketing to drive more business in addition to the
lead gen company. When she dug into it, turns out the lead gen business conned
the hostess into turning over the google maps account via the phone
verification and everyone that looked up the restaurant in google to order
went through the lead gen service, where they should have gone directly to the
restaurant, saving the restaurant the lead gen commission.

While one might argue that this is legitimate, the owner of the restaurant had
no idea and felt cheated.

------
dmschulman
SEO companies, especially the shady ones in my experience, like to be
particularly litigious.

Is there an equivalent of the Better Business Bureau (BBB) in Canada?
Contacting the BBB and filing a claim is definitely a way to get some
momentum, lots of businesses in the USA at least depend on having a good,
clean BBB rating.

~~~
iharris
The BBB does operate in Canada; we checked and this company isn't listed,
unfortunately.

~~~
giarc
Consult the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada and see what
they say.

------
malexw
This is the second time now that I've seen this come up with somebody
impersonating a doctor in Canada. Someone created a fake Twitter account and
website for a Dr. O that I know. Can I connect you with Dr. O in case these
two incidents are related?

~~~
iharris
Absolutely - I sent a brief e-mail to the address in your bio. Thanks!

------
raverbashing
Impersonation is a criminal matter.

This might be a matter for the police, especially if the SEO company is in
Canada.

------
jwinskowski
There is a difference between an "SEO Company" and an "Extortion Company."
This is an example of the latter. Those suckers are being blatantly deceptive
and deserve to be approached with appropriate legal action. Sickening.

------
logn
> Interestingly, the fake clinic domain name is VERY similar (one letter
> difference) to another, legitimate clinic in the city.

Contact the organization administering the top level domain and file a typo
squatting dispute.

Also, most likely these SEO people will stop impersonating the doctor's office
when it's clear they won't win the account (edit: they'll start impersonating
a different doctor). Their mistake was picking up the phone call. It's common
practice and arguably ethical to set up and optimize a placeholder site. Any
pre-launch website with a link to sign up is doing exactly this.

------
ohyeshedid
The physician has a lawyer. The lawyer needs to send a DMCA notice to whoever
is hosting the fake site, be it server reseller or webhost, then have the
lawyer send Google[1] a DMCA takedown request. It should resolve itself
quickly as technically it could be reported as phishing.

Google DMCA Information:
[https://support.google.com/legal/answer/3110420?rd=2](https://support.google.com/legal/answer/3110420?rd=2)

------
readme
You need to talk to a lawyer. It's extremely likely the law protects him on
this matter.

------
thelostagency
hahahaha yeah not really ethical and not something most SEO's would do

------
loceng
Who's the company?

------
curiously
An even worse form of such practices are sites that basically crawl yelp or
yellowpages and then proceed to spam and call small businesses with the lure
of 'claim your profile and get customers', when all it really is just emails
from unqualified people submitting their contact information through the main
site and randomly getting matched.

This startup company has ton of bad consumer reports, I'm glad that I ended up
not working on their website. I would've had trouble sleeping had I seen what
their website was actually doing, ripping off small businesses with fake
leads.

------
curiously
Oh boy. Let the ass whooping begin.

------
varsketiz
I remember meeting some French guys in one of SF's startup accelerators who
had a similar startup - to create websites for small businesses from crawled
data and do serious SEO for these websites, then once customers inquiry or try
to register for appointments online or whatnot, they would send the original
business an email saying something along the lines of "claim your website -
you have customers waiting". While it definitely seems to be in a gray area -
it does sound like a decent idea... Could someone with a legal background
comment on the legality of this?

~~~
hdevalence
It does not sound like a decent idea.

'Decent' is not a word that fits with 'deceptive practices', 'impersonation',
or 'extortion'.

~~~
varsketiz
Well, sorry for choosing a word you don't agree with. I could have chosen
"interesting" instead of decent - it does not change my point.

"'deceptive practices', 'impersonation', or 'extortion'" \- this, however, is
your interpretation and it is taking it pretty far.

'deceptive practices' \- that I can agree with. No matter how you do it, it is
deceptive. Then again, a lot of businesses were built with (oh, say Airbnb or
Youtube) / use (every cheap airline website) shady practices.

'impersonation' \- does not have to be. What if they clearly list that this is
not an official X site? If your data is public and crawlable, is it illegal
for people to use that information?

'extortion' \- does not have to be. Isn't this an equivalent of going to the
same business and saying, I did a bit of research on you, then I told 3 people
about you and they would love to buy your services. I'll refer them to you if
you give me $5. Is this illegal?

~~~
MichaelGG
If you're being clear that you're just gonna be attempting to relay info, then
you're probably OK. The issue is that you'd discover it to be more profitable
to lie, and pretend you're the actual business. That way, you're holding their
reputation hostage. If they don't pay, those customers feel that the real
company just ignored them.

It's not a terrible idea for targeting SMBs that don't have a website, so long
you aren't misrepresenting things.

