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Topic: Nokia

Anonymous comments on Lumia 800 'review' traced back to Nokia and Microsoft IP addresses

Summary: Comments on negative Nokia Lumia 800 review traced back to Nokia and Microsoft IP addresses.

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

By for Hardware 2.0 |

Employees from both Nokia and Microsoft have been caught astroturfing a negative Nokia Lumia 800 posted on the Indian website Moneylife.in, claims the author of the review.

The comments were made on a 'review' post by Yogesh Sapkale. The reviewer, who admits to having never even held a Lumia 800, compared the handset negatively to the iPhone:

"Although Nokia sees its Lumia 800 to be a competitor to Apple iPhone, it is nowhere near the niche product. In fact compared with iPhone, the Lumia 800 can be termed as 'noPhone'."

Enter the first comment, by Harish:

"What an crap review!! it's one of the best phone available, iphone is so dumb compared to this.... Guess some one is paying you lumpsum, congrats.."

This comment had an originating IP of 192.100.117.41 ... which belongs to Nokia.

Next up, a comment from Aditya Agrawal:

"dude, gone are the times when actual consumers just use to care about the technical specificiations of mobiles. today, people want devices which are beauitful, fast and easy-to-use. for most of the consumers, it does not matter if the phone has 512mb or 1gb ram. if the 512mb performs better in real-life, that't the one customers are gonna prefer. just a small advice , go to a store and use windows phone 7.5 for 10 mins, the last thing you will care is whether the phone has a single or a dual core."

This comment originated from 207.46.55.31 ... which belongs to Microsoft (this IP address has been doing a lot of unwanted Wikipedia editing too).

Sapkale went on to reveal the IP addresses and email address of the commentators in a subsequent post on the site.

So Moneylife.in is caught breaking its own privacy policy by publishing information about commentators, and employees from Microsoft and Nokia look like they're astroturfing reviews. No one wins.

(via The Guardian)

Topics: Nokia, Microsoft

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51 comments
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  • RE: Anonymous comments on Lumia 800 'review' traced back to Nokia and Microsoft IP addresses

    Rogue employees aren't anything new. I'm sure this isn't company sanctioned, thus it isn't news.

    Check my IP, I don't work for either (but do work for a partner).
    mrmckeb@...
    Reply Vote

    • RE: Anonymous comments on Lumia 800 'review' traced back to Nokia and Microsoft IP addresses

      @mrmckeb@... <br>This isn't news at all. And to act like employees of all the other tech companies don't defend their products on the web is ridiculous. It happens in all companies not just tech and whats wrong with an employee defending a product they may have helped bring to market and truly enjoy. How about some real news now!
      OhTheHumanity
      Reply Vote

  • RE: Anonymous comments on Lumia 800 'review' traced back to Nokia and Microsoft IP addresses

    Talk about rouge employees. Did they hire 2 year olds? Are these IPs both Indian?
    The one and only, Cylon Centurion
    Reply Vote

    • RE: Anonymous comments on Lumia 800 'review' traced back to Nokia and Microsoft IP addresses

      @Cylon Centurion
      Rouge employees? Are they red? :-)
      Restricted_access
      Reply Vote

      • that would make them red indian

        ... but instead of smoke signals they were sending out anonymous posts about a product in the pipeline - that he/she hadn't even used!
        thx-1138_
        Reply Vote

    • If they're 2 year olds, I hope they're not wearing rouge

      @Cylon Centurion - shades of that TLC show about toddlers in beauty pageants.

      Sorry, just struck me as funny, i know you meant rogue.
      daboochmeister
      Reply Vote

  • So it's unethical for MS and Nokia ...

    ... employees to post comments on reviews of the companies' products? The situation is so ridiculous! You have this guy reviewing a product he has not even touched, who invades the privacy of his readers, reveals their personal information; and you make it sound like MS and Nokia are somehow the bad guys.
    P. Douglas
    Reply Vote

    • RE: Anonymous comments on Lumia 800 'review' traced back to Nokia and Microsoft IP addresses

      @P. Douglas What makes MS and Nokia the "bad guys" here are the comments made by the people using the MS and Nokia IP addresses. The person's comment from Nokia was praising the Lumia saying it's one of the best phones available, then calls the iphone "dumb" compared to it. The comment from the MS IP was doing the same thing, but was praising the windows phone. I also think it's funny how that person said people don't care about the tech specs of phones. So you have the post from the Nokia IP praising the Nokia product and insulting the iPhone, and the post from the MS IP praising the Windows Phone and insulting the intelligence of consumers.

      Now, did you also read the last paragraph of the article where AKH says "No one wins"? He points out that all three of them were wrong with what they were doing.
      SpiderTech
      Reply Vote

      • RE: Anonymous comments on Lumia 800 'review' traced back to Nokia and Microsoft IP addresses

        @SpiderTech I don't think they were trying to be insulting to customers. What they are talking about is that a windows phone with a single core is about as fast as an android or ios phone with a dual core. It is a realy fast and smooth OS but it still needs a little work. I have had my windows phone for about a year now and I will stay with it.
        imsimsj
        Reply Vote

      • RE: Anonymous comments on Lumia 800 'review' traced back to Nokia and Microsoft IP addresses

        @SpiderTech There was only one villain here, and that is the original poster. He'd fit in well in the ZDNet comments here :-)... he trash-talked a product without providing any specific evidence to back up his assertions. In short, he was a fanboy/troll combo. A Nokia employee did NOT astroturf because they did not pretend to be a consumer reviewing their device - instead, they pointed out that the "review" was worthless and suggested, as to 90% of ZDNet posters here, that someone who wrote the review must be being paid to do so (irony of their own position lost on them, of course). The Microsoft employee also did not astroturf because again they did not pretend to be a consumer reviewing their handset purchase. Instead, they made general comments on consumer mindset which may or may not be accurate, but they do raise a valid point in that it's not MHz or ram that counts, it's the ultimate performance of the device itself. Again, nothing evil here, and no astroturfing.

        The original poster then freaks out so bad that someone disagreed with him that he began investigating IP addresses, which is weird in and of itself. He then reveals the posters' corporate identities without justification as there was no pretending going on.

        By my score, one villain, one poster with a broken irony meter but otherwise harmless, one good guy. And for the record, I don't own a smart phone or use any products from Apple or Microsoft, so I'm not a fanboy, troll, or shill either. :-)
        jgm@...
        Reply Vote

      • RE: Anonymous comments on Lumia 800 'review' traced back to Nokia and Microsoft IP addresses

        @imsimsj If someone were to root an Android phone and install Windows mobile Phone 7.5 on it, it would run horribly slow as Windows mobile Phone 7.5 is not optimized to run on dual core hardware.
        Rick_Kl
        Reply Vote

      • RE: Anonymous comments on Lumia 800 'review' traced back to Nokia and Microsoft IP addresses

        @jgm@??? [i] A Nokia employee did NOT astroturf because they did not pretend to be a consumer reviewing their device - instead, they pointed out that the "review" was worthless[/i] By failing to announce their affiliation with Microsoft, or its subsidiary Nokia), these Microsoft employees were in fact posing as unbiased consumers. That is why the term Astrorurfers indeed fits. What we have here is two Wrongs:
        The original blog was wrong, for posting a review on a product under false pretenses. The second wrong was Microsoft directing employees to post Anonymous comments on the blog, not only insetting the blogger, but the competitor???s products.
        Rick_Kl
        Reply Vote

    • RE: Anonymous comments on Lumia 800 'review' traced back to Nokia and Microsoft IP addresses

      @P. Douglas I completely agree, the corporations themselves aren't to blame, only the individuals who commented and the person who decided to publish the IP addresses of those who did comment.
      Parassassin
      Reply Vote

      • RE: Anonymous comments on Lumia 800 'review' traced back to Nokia and Microsoft IP addresses

        @Parassassin It would depend on where these individuals worked. They are already biased, as Microsoft stands to make money on the Microsoft Lumia phones. If the individuals work in the marketing department, then they are most likely using this as part of their marketing campaign. Look up Microsoft???s Freedom to Innovate campaign, they even used names of dead people to push their agenda
        Rick_Kl
        Reply Vote

  • RE: Anonymous comments on Lumia 800 'review' traced back to Nokia and Microsoft IP addresses

    The "review" is a joke. How can someone who has never seen or use the device write a review?
    illegaloperation
    Reply Vote

    • RE: Anonymous comments on Lumia 800 'review' traced back to Nokia and Microsoft IP addresses

      @day2die and yet we see people on here do it every day. The original person that wrote a blog gets attacked By Microsoft, and one of its subsidiaries (Nokia). That reminds me of all the dead people that rose from the dead to defend Microsoft during the Anti-trust trial.
      Rick_Kl
      Reply Vote

  • RE: Anonymous comments on Lumia 800 'review' traced back to Nokia and Microsoft IP addresses

    AKH also talk about paid blogging. If you check Google rankings that review page comes in the first few, that means Google ranks anything that negatively criticizes its competition including Microsoft and Apple. That definitely sounds fishy. Thanks for its adulterated algorithm, which we could never see because it is conveniently closed source by the open source advocate, Google.
    Ram U
    Reply Vote

    • Sure he did ..... NOT!!

      @Rama.NET You should RTFA before posting complains.
      wackoae
      Reply Vote

      • RE: Anonymous comments on Lumia 800 'review' traced back to Nokia and Microsoft IP addresses

        @wackoae <br>of course, his headline killed my interest in fully reading, later I went back and corrected my stands on him. perhaps you should give a moment and read my edited response before commenting.
        Ram U
        Reply Vote

    • RE: Anonymous comments on Lumia 800 'review' traced back to Nokia and Microsoft IP addresses

      @Rama.NET
      Well considering how much press the story has received, I'd imagine a lot of people not unlike you would want to take a look at that review and as Google tries to find what people are looking for, it's natural that a good search engine would post it near the top. Perhaps this other search engine you are using just sucks. It would probably also explain why it is doing so poorly despite huge amounts of marketing being spent.
      anono
      Reply Vote
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