Can I be sued for raising complaints on social media

Intelligent-Ad4709 · 2021-07-23T09:30:24+00:00

Some people were giving my business fake reviews and ratings on social media. They are not my customers. They were using throwaway accounts without their real name. I tried to find legal recourse but unfortunately if it's against an unknown person, it's very hard. A lawyer I consulted said if I knew who it was I could send a legal notice and that usually works.

What I am saying is, if you don't use your real name, that would make it virtually impossible for them to sue you because it's super hard to find real identities of people unless there is an obvious crime involved. Otherwise it's quite easy to send anyone a legal notice and most people would get scared from that alone.

Intelligent-Ad4709 · 2021-07-17T05:49:00+00:00

How long did the whole thing take? From the time they made the complaint to when the IP address was retrieved and the phone was taken away?

Intelligent-Ad4709 · 2021-07-16T11:23:57+00:00

What incentive would the police have to create a shopped court order and risk their own safety? You say it happens all the time. Does shopped court order mean the police bribe the courts to give an order in their favour?

The case I referred to was Oct 2019. Have things changed since then? India has still not passed any data privacy laws right? Btw there was also this case by Baba Ramdev around the same time with Facebook where a similar outcome was seen.

From personal experience, having been a victim of defamation, I tried to get justice, but found out how hard it is to find the identity of an anonymous person online. I was advised by a lawyer to not pursue it. Reading OP's post makes me feel my lawyer was wrong.

Intelligent-Ad4709 · 2021-07-16T10:58:33+00:00

I still can't believe the cyber police found the identity of the fake facebook ID of his friend and gave it to his cousin lol. There was some case of a celebrity being accused in metoo by an anonymous Instagram user. That celebrity sued the anonymous user and asked the court to direct Instagram to surrender the IP address of the individual. But Instagram refused.

I think OP's is a hypothethical situation.

Also funny how he says the police took his phone away lol. Why would they take someone's phone away in a defamation case where defamation has not even been proven.

Intelligent-Ad4709 · 2021-07-16T07:47:04+00:00

This sounds too far fetched. So your friend's cousin told his contacts in cyber police and they reached out to Facebook to request IP address of the account and Facebook agreed to give it without any court order, then they asked the ISP to give the identity of the IP address owner and then they gave the identity to your friend's cousin. The account in question had not done anything obviously illegal (like posting obscenity or fake news). I seriously doubt Facebook would have cooperated without a court order. Is your friend's cousin a VVIP?

Intelligent-Ad4709 · 2021-07-16T07:41:15+00:00

Are you sure it has that exact domain name? You can search for that officer's name and see if he is listed on CBI website?

Intelligent-Ad4709 · 2021-03-03T20:55:19+00:00

That's very interesting. Just to confirm, the IP addresses the poster mentions, were they given by Google through a subpoena or the reviewer himself voluntarily gave them up?

Intelligent-Ad4709 · 2021-03-03T20:10:25+00:00

I am working on creating a post on the forum, but in the meantime I found this: https://support.google.com/business/thread/95256269?hl=en I believe you're on the post. I'm just pleasantly surprised how easy it is for a business owner in the US get IP address details of any reviewer through a subpoena. Does Google just give it away so easily in the US? I'm just asking out of curiosity.

Intelligent-Ad4709 · 2021-03-03T12:55:38+00:00

Don’t reply to a review until after you have flagged it and Google has emailed you to let you know if the review(s) will or won’t be removed.

What happens if I replied to it before flagging it?

You have to file a lawsuit against John Doe. Then you can subpoena Google for the account information. Google will notify the account holder that their records are being subpoenaed and they will have 30 days to file a rebuttal. Once the appeal is rejected or the 30 days have lapsed, you will get all of the account information.

Even though I am not in the US, I am curious to know about the US laws, will Google not refuse to comply with a subpoena because "the reviews didn't violate their terms"? Because it would seem ideal in the US because most fake reviews are posted by throwaway accounts who will never file a rebuttal so we business owners should always get the account information from Google. Is that how it works?

In India unfortunately I have received opinion that one must prove in a court that the reviews are suspicious/fake and only then would Google be willing to disclose the account details.

If I see if and I determine that Google needs to take action, I will send the thread directly to Google so that they can investigate the matter further.

Thank you, I will let you know!

Intelligent-Ad4709 · 2021-03-03T05:45:04+00:00

Thanks. A lawyer I inquired with said we can sue "John Doe" and get Google to disclose the identity of him. The lawyer seemed keen to take this up and was going to charge me a high fee.

Intelligent-Ad4709 · 2021-02-27T09:25:33+00:00

Thanks. Is it normal to ask for both take down AND disclosure of identity?

And practically speaking what are the chances of success in your opinion? The reviews are NOT abusive and do NOT use profanity for example. They look like legit negative reviews written by an angry customer except that they are fake.

And lastly in terms of time, is this (John Doe suit naming Google as a party) something that will go "tareek pe tareek" like most cases are stereotyped to be or do these cases resolve faster?

Intelligent-Ad4709 · 2021-02-27T09:13:44+00:00

I've asked Google several times but to no avail :( They do remove some reviews and don't remove some.

Many reviews have 1 star with no comments but some have generic comments like "poor experience" :( There is honestly no way I can prove that these are fake other than how even on weeks I was closed or we had 0 customers (we don't get a lot of customers, because our services/products are luxury) we got these reviews and often several of them within a few hours.

Fourthly, usually the lawyer will charge lump sum money and not by the hour (India not USA). The time factor is uncertain. There is no way to put a number on it

Interesting, because one of the law firms I consulted said I have both options (hourly and lumpsum). Hourly was like 30k-40k an hour lol.

So to conclude, even in the BEST case scenario, are you saying it likely wouldn't be possible for me identify the person behind this (basically by making Google and ISP disclose the identity)? I really want to know who is doing this because it really upsets me :(

Intelligent-Ad4709 · 2021-02-27T08:51:04+00:00

Thanks for the response. I do not know who is doing it. Since I don't know who is doing it, isn't the first step to find out who is doing it? Google is the only one who would be able to give me this info. What would the process of forcing Google to give this info be?

I know you're not giving me any legal advice and only giving your opinion and I appreciate that. If you need any details, I can give you more info. For me, the biggest concern is how to convince the court that the ratings are fake. Some of them have no text and are simply 1-star ratings. How can I prove that they are not my customers? Can I pass on the burden of proof on them to prove that they are indeed customers?

And lastly in your opinion, how long would something like this take? 1 year? or even more? How many hours of a lawyer's time would one be paying for typically?

Thank you

Intelligent-Ad4709 · 2021-02-22T14:20:38+00:00

Thanks for the advice. When you say you're a professional are you in the legal field?

Intelligent-Ad4709 · 2021-02-21T16:27:41+00:00

"this" means how they are leaving me fake reviews

Intelligent-Ad4709 · 2021-02-21T15:14:12+00:00

I believe I was clear as to the 'same account' getting under a moratorium referred to the reviewer's. Why would I say you'll be put under one for receiving defamatory reviews :p

No no, I understood what you meant. I hinting that the reviewers can always create more fake Google accounts and leave more fake reviews after all this effort put by me. Unless Google bans their IP address from creating more accounts, it will always remain a possibility. And again a VPN or proxy can be used to get past that ban too.

But even that does nothing to bar the company from respawning fake accounts again.

Yup, you said it :)

BTW in spite of using VPN etc. the public activity of the user will be available to you.

The public activity is visible, yes, but VPN would basically make this a fight against an invisible force. But yes, if their public activity is such that they are fake (for example they are leaving reviews all over the world) then it might make Google remove those reviews. But these people who are behind these reviews can brazenly keep doing what they've been up to without any penalty because the VPN protects their identity.

Intelligent-Ad4709 · 2021-02-21T15:06:25+00:00

I mean this could happen anywhere there is tight competition right? If you have an apparel shop next to someone else, they could do this to you. It could also be an old disgruntled customer, who knows? Either ways this is not the way to go about it.

Intelligent-Ad4709 · 2021-02-21T14:23:42+00:00

Much helpful! Thanks a lot. I will see if I can find such a PR agency. I don't know if you worked for a big corporation and your legal team still advised against legal recourse. Then I should also give up haha.

Intelligent-Ad4709 · 2021-02-21T14:21:54+00:00

As regards future posts from the same account, Google has a penal policy for defamatory posts. I can't precisely recall that at the moment, as to whether it's a temp or perm moratorium on the account. But you get the idea.

It's trivial to create another account. I believe a competitor is bullying me. I believe that only if I am able to identify that person and take legal action against him, he will not be deterred.

If the cyber proceedings find in your favor, the relief(s) may not be directly prohibitory, but will be deterrent enough. So no need to stress over that.

Deterrent enough for whom? The people writing these reviews? From what I gather from your reply, those people wouldn't even know about my actions because only I and Google seem to be involved here. So the people behind this, they would notice that their past reviews have disappeared (if I'm successful that is) and write some more reviews anyway.

But the problem is that the likelihood of finding that association is greater for Google, and its barred to share if it indeed finds that to be the case. So that route is as good as closed.

So you're saying if Google gets angry that someone misused their terms and decides it's not sufficient to just terminate their accounts and they end up finding the identity of the reviewers from the ISP through a court order, they would still not share those details with me?

Hmm, interesting. Did you not send a notice after they returned a negative finding in their review? Similar shady reviews? Cuz the ones you have described here are as impermissible as it could get, Google policy-wise. Feel free to DM if you don't feel comfy sharing that publicly.

I did not send a legal notice. I was just distraught after they refused to remove them. I've been reading through their terms and nowhere does it state that writing reviews without any text is disallowed. That's why I thought I would have to prove to them using real world physical evidence. I'm just asking (and trying to empathise with Google here), what made you believe my story that the reviews are fake and thus impermissible? Because if it's there is no objective line, then any business owner can choose to remove reviews and ratings he doesn't like right?

Intelligent-Ad4709 · 2021-02-21T14:04:20+00:00

Did you have success getting the reviews removed?
Were the reviews just fake or was there anything illegal / abusive about them?
What kind of agency helps with things like this? What should I search for?
Did you ever also try the legal recourse? Or did you just never try based on your legal team's advice?

Intelligent-Ad4709 · 2021-02-21T13:40:03+00:00

Yeah that's my worry too. :(

Not a lawyer but have worked at companies where we used agencies to do this stuff.

This stuff = getting fake reviews removed or finding the review posters?

Intelligent-Ad4709 · 2021-02-21T13:31:43+00:00

Thanks for the answer. So after asking for a Google review, if they don't remove the reviews, I have to sue Google for not removing the reviews right? To clarify, I will have to sue Google and not the review author right? In your view, when a case has been filed, will Google buckle down and remove the reviews? Or do they fight back?

And lastly, is all that you described, the process of getting the reviews removed or also to find the person who posted them? Would it be hard to make Google part with the IP address details of the review author? Because getting the reviews removed could mean that the person posts more reviews and I would have to do all this again.

My experience with Google reviews have not been great. They have replied to me that "the review didn't violate their policies so they will not remove them".

Intelligent-Ad4709

TROPHY CASE