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

Employees from both Nokia and Microsoft have been caught astroturfing a negativeNokia 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)