Scammers pretending to be bloggers to get free gear
The old "I'm a reporter with..." game is afoot in gadget land! CrunchGear reports that someone representing themselves as "Paul Deery" or "Derry" is contacting consumer electronics companies and requesting review gear in its name, and that of the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Such tactics are nothing new—fake restaurant critics have been eating on the back of this scam for more than a century—but it's the first time I've seen it since switching to the Information Superhighway from dead tree journalism.
Vendors and PR folk, if you ever get a request from BBG for something and it smells funny, you can verify the request simply by emailing one of us at a boing boing net email address: Joel@, Brownlee@ and Rob@.
Attention: Paul Deery/Derry does not work for CrunchGear or, presumably, the Philadelphia Inquirer [CrunchGear]
the latest
latest episodes
Any electronics company that just says "Oh. OK." and sends the guy some gear, probably deserves to lose it.
Also, do most electronics companies send out review stuff at request? Or do they send them to the magazine unsolicited? At any rate, I would think that the major electronics companies have the shipping address for the major review magazines/sites in a computer somewhere and aren't going to send them to some guy at his PO box or Apartment.
"Also, do most electronics companies send out review stuff at request? Or do they send them to the magazine unsolicited? "
Both. We haven't done much reviewing here (yet), so mostly they come looking for us.
In this case, they've usually done their research and know who they're talking to already. PR people sometimes lead in by praising something you've written, to show they're paying attention.
When we approach them, however, there's usually a round of due diligence. For cheap stuff, it can be perfunctory. Fancier gear means more extensive paperwork/assurances, like mailing a loan agreement to a physical address and what have you.
Usually.
Junk can just arrive unsolicited. Some gadgets really are so cheap that the cost of the time of making personal contact is just not worth it. Cory might call it "Dandelion" marketing!"
Why pretend you're from Crunchgear or Engadget when it costs like $10 to secure a domain name and make your own website dedicated to gadgets? If we've learned anything from the Mafia, it's that semi-legitimate is the way to go.
#3: Thanks for the idea ;) Also, nice username... I can't wait to read N.S.'s newest.
Well I dunno, you see a lot of times the effort of actually doing a reviewing site while keeping a day job is not that difficult. You have a site that reviews gear, okay so you take your gear and write an honest review, talk with friends about their gear, be honest about it and put these ditties up a few times a week maybe if you can swing it a post or so a day, honestly plug your work, (ie don't spam but when the moment is appropriate in forums and the like mention you do some reviewing on a site at..) and it might take a few weeks to a few months... but eventually people start sending you stuff to review or at least soliciting to send you stuff... its not without its effort but its not exactly something that is horrifically difficult to do either.
Having witnessed a friend who had a goth-n-music zine back in the day, it can actually get kind of insane after a while the amount of stuff you get all hoping for a good review.
Another good thing to point out is do a cursory verification of the identity. When I get or request something for review I provide my contact info and plenty of URLs in my signature. That way you can track down my email address online, the places I've written for, and I also include my phone number and address.
I'm written for enough publication and my contact info is floating out there, so it is easy to verify who I am.
I know a lot of companies just give newspapers stuff (I work at one) knowing that we'll never review it. I've had a number of record companies contact me about reviewing an album. I told them we most likely wouldn't, but they send the music anyway. I have about ten free CDs from this.
CMUwriter -- do you get the books and galleys? When I was last at a newspaper, we were buried in that stuff.
Shoot Rob, I've worked at a couple major media outlets, and there's almost always a giant box/cabinet of 'freebies'. Where I am now, companies send music hoping it gets used on air. If I go through the giant stacks of submissions, I'll find the same CD 3-4-5 times. Previous job, we'd get the same book sent to 4 or 5 different folks, just hoping someone would read it. Pretty sure my first half-dozen USB memory sticks (8 megs, whooo!) came unsolicited in the mail. Our games industry guy had a box full of the crappiest games you could imagine, on the off-chance he'd actually play them.
If companies are getting taken, they have almost no one to blame but themselves. Verification isn't hard at all, and they've tossed so much free stuff around over the years, people almost expect it.
So which one of you at BBG is really a scammer trying to get free stuff? :)