Mobile Network Comparison

As one if the biggest UK communities for virtual networks, we get a lot of discussion of the latest offerings and tariffs in our comments sections. In fact, our lovely readers have left over 3000 comments over the last few years and we’re always happy to hear people’s opinions and experiences whether they are good or bad.

However, it’s our responsibility to provide a fair and impartial platform for discussing mobile networks. And nowadays, corporations are coming up with cunning and conniving ways to manipulate consumers. One of these is astroturfing which can aim to alter public viewpoints by pretending to be an impartial customer rather than a paid employeed. According to Wikipedia, it’s “a practice intended to give the statements or organizations more credibility by withholding information about the source’s financial connection”.

As a result, we try to keep an eye out for people attacking competitors or praising their own companies under the guise of an anonymous member of the public and without disclosing that they’re working on behalf of a corporate political sponsor. We’ve already managed to publish a detailed exposé of Vectone Mobile who used pseudonyms to promote their own services.

In that case, we managed to track down the comments to their Head of Online Marketing. We even cross-referenced the email address the comments came from with IP addresses used to promote Delight Mobile, a sister company of Vectone. Armed with this conclusive proof, we were able to reveal that this was a common practice at Vectone.

So of course, when we receive glowingly-sycophantic comments, we take a careful look to check nothing is awry. Recently, someone calling themselves “Cameron” left a comment about Now Mobile saying, “You ALL need to check Now PAYG out, their tariffs are so good. They are so transparent too!”

This already seemed a bit unnatural and contrived to us. And then they went on to say “No fair use policy at all – this month so far (they won’t be impressed with this)”.

Our BS-detector was now beeping like crazy so we dug into the website logs:

What’s that, the comment was left by wasim.akhtar@nowpayg.co.uk? Isn’t that a domain that’s similar to Now Mobile? We decided to visit nowpayg.co.uk – what do you know, it’s the Now Mobile website! But that’s not evidence in itself – it’s very easy to leave a fake email address to mislead people.

What about this name, Wasim Akhtar? Why is that the name of the email address yet the user chose to have the comment appear under the name “Cameron”? What reason would someone have for wanting to conceal their name when writing a positive comment about a company? Well, let’s look a bit more at who this Wasim Akhtar could be. A simple Google search brought up the following:

Well, what do you know. It seems someone called Wasim Akhtar works for “Now Mobile Telecommunications Ltd”. And he’s Head of Retail. What else can we find?

So Wasim has been working there for some years now… But this still isn’t enough. Someone could have done all this research themselves and used his name in a type of reserve astroturfing to make Wasim and Now Mobile look bad.

Is there any way we can find out for sure? Well, for a start, the webserver logs give an IP address for the person who left the comment. Let’s see what we can dig up with that.

A simple command can query the WHOIS database for the IP address 194.72.102.146. This is the output we got.

mnc@umami:~$ whois -c GB 194.72.102.146

% The RIPE Database is subject to Terms and Conditions.
% See http://www.ripe.net/db/support/db-terms-conditions.pdf

% Note: this output has been filtered.
%       To receive output for a database update, use the "-B" flag.

% Information related to '194.72.102.144 - 194.72.102.159'

% Abuse contact for '194.72.102.144 - 194.72.102.159' is 'abuse@bt.com'

inetnum:        194.72.102.144 - 194.72.102.159
netname:        NOWTEL
descr:          FTIP003263549 Nowtel Management Limited
country:        GB
admin-c:        MK12425-RIPE
tech-c:         MK12425-RIPE
status:         ASSIGNED PA
mnt-by:         BTNET-MNT
mnt-lower:      BTNET-MNT
mnt-routes:     BTNET-MNT
remarks:        Please send abuse notification to abuse@bt.net
remarks:        Please send delisting issues to btnetdns@bt.net
source:         RIPE # Filtered

How very interesting! Seems that the comment was left from a computer owned by Nowtel Management Limited? But who is this Nowtel? Well, it’s a company based in London. And it turns out it’s the parent company of Now Mobile. Nowtel launched Now Mobile in July 2010.

Oh dear, Wasim: Busted!

Astroturfing is bad enough as it conceals your true intentions and aims to mislead and manipulate your customers. At no point in his comment did Wasim reveal his real name publicly nor disclose that he works for the company he was recommending. In fact, he actually did the opposite – by writing “hey won’t be impressed with this” he’s trying to give the impression that he’s in no way affiliated with Now Mobile.

We looked into Nowtel a bit more and found that one of their Core Values is “Be Transparent”. They also proudly claim that “Honesty, integrity and openness is at the heart of our business”:

What’s your take, readers? Is it “transparent” for Now Mobile employees to pose under different names and publish comments praising their own company while simultaneously pretending to be completely unrelated? Is there any instance when it’s not appropriate to fully disclose their employers? And what do you think about Now Mobile now you’ve read about this?

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We recently got a bunch of comments in a row recently that all praised Vectone highly. Although they were under several different names, we got a bit suspicious as they had used the same email address every time. After a bit of poking around, it soon became apparent that something very dodgy was going on.

The first post was on 20 March at 12:29 by a user named “RJ” and said:

I reccomend vectone to anyone who wants to work hard and be rewarded for that. In no other company you get recognition for your hardwork so quickly.

This same user, “RJ” then went on to make two more posts in quick sucession, both defending Vectone Mobile:

First, at 15:31:

I used the service for the 1p deal as well and I got the correct rates. You need to understand that 1p is not to mobiles in all countries. It practically impossible to offer 1p rate to mobiles. What vectone does offer is the UKs lowest rates to international mobiles in addition to 1p landline rates

Then at 15:34:

sory to hear that ! what i am wondeing is how can they have 2 million Uk customers if they are so bad. They must be doing a lot of things right !

The interesting thing was that the posts didn’t stop there. At 15:50 another user named “Andy” wrote:

everyone in my family is on vectone and we never faced issues calling each other.

It was about now that we checked out these particular comments and noticed that, although they used completely different names, they both had the same email address registered: rishabh.jaipuria@gmail.com

This would make sense for a user named “RJ” but not so much for someone called “Andy“. Furthermore, why would someone want to use two different names even though they only had one email address?

Curious, we googled “Rishabh Jaipuria” and this LinkedIn profile came up.

It’s for one Rishabh Jaipuria whose current job is, wait for it, “Head of Online Marketing and Sales at Vectone“. Even better, he writes in his profile:

I am an open networker, please add me using rishabh.jaipuria(at)gmail.com .

So it seems that this Rishabh Jaipuria has been engaging in a little bit of astroturfing. That is, pretending to be writing grassroots support when he’s actually being paid by a company. By posing as a normal customer, Vectone is trying to mislead all the visitors to our site with phoney user reviews posted by completely fake people. Surely this is a bit embarrassing for Vectone?

But wait, it gets better!

We wanted to be even more sure so checked the website logs and, sure enough, the comments by RJ (who never identifies or discloses himself as Vectone employee) were posted from exactly the same IP address as those from “Andy” later in the day.

What’s more, there was a post left a long time earlier from exactly the same IP address on the 16th February from a user named “bleh” saying:

I work for them too.
And they suck. It’s a joke!

As both these comments were from the same IP address, that means they were both from the same building – the poster who goes by “RJ” (and other aliases) with the email address rishabh.jaipuria@gmail.com was posting his positive comments from the same place as the person claiming to work for Vectone!

We then went and looked up all the comments posted from this IP address and found many more from rishabh.jaipuria@gmail.com but again with different names defending Delight Mobile. Why is a Vectone Mobile employee defending Delight? Well, they just so happen to be the same company!

The comments were posted under names such as “cindy” and “sandeep” and said things like:

very starange. I never had any connecion issues with delight !!

and,

Hi Paul, i had similar problems with them as well at the start but now they seem to have improved their service greatly. I guess like any startup there ware some bumps in the begenning.

There were also two posts (1, 2) from the same IP address saying:

I like Delight Mobile. I have never had any connection problems or anything like this.

Customer service was good too. They do have a good deals for call inside UK, but what is the most attractive to me is the cheap international call they offer.

As far as know, they really do have the cheapest rates.

and,

I use Vectone for international calls as well and I do not feel ripped off, as on Vectone website is clearly stated that ‘it’s only 1p a minute to make international calls’. It is general statement, not stating mobile rates anywhere…so it is landline, otherwise they would write mobiles…and also there is a limited list of 1p countries. Are you sure your country was on the list of 1p countries? I recommend you to do a little reading before getting any SIM card or topup next time:)it is worth it…I am really satisfied with their services, but I know what I got, so I have good experience. However, I cannot believe that they could mess up with your history of calls…sounds like a story from a movie:)

Funnily enough, the only two reviews that had been commented on by this IP address were, you guessed it: Vectone and Delight.

And as if they weren’t busted enough, they’ve also recently been registering new forum accounts to defend themselves on critical threads. Unfortunately, they haven’t noticed that the threads were all very old so bumping them all in quick sucession is very obvious especially if you’re using brand-new just-created accounts. We’re betting the admins of that forum will find they all used the same IP address and that it’s the same as the user posting positive comments on our reviews…

If you’re trying to manipulate public opinion with dishonest astroturfing, you’ve got to be a lot more subtle than that!

Have you ever caught companies astroturfing? How did it make you feel about them? What do you think about Vectone/Delight now you’ve read about this?

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