Scamurai Weekly: The Forex Review Site Using Fake DMCA Complaints to Censor Criticism
A shady review site, online censorship and an exclusive update on JPEX.
Hello from Vientiane,
I’ve spent the last few days going down the rabbit hole of fake copyright infringement complaints.
I know this sounds incredibly boring. Hear me out.
Last week, there was a flashy conference in Hong Kong run by a company called WikiEXPO. It’s a small event that takes place in several Asian cities every year with speakers from the likes of HSBC, Animoca Brands and Tron. It mainly focuses on crypto and forex.
The night before it took place, I tried to look up an article I had written last year about its sister company, WikiFX. It’s a site that ostensibly reviews and rates forex brokers for the benefit of retail traders, but it will also bump your rating if you pay them enough money.
Yet no matter what I typed into Google, I could not find the article.
It turned out a strange company called OptiEdge Dynamics had filed a DMCA copyright complaint to Google. It falsely claimed its copyrighted images had been stolen and used on the page.
Google complied with its request for removal and scrubbed the offending article from its search results.
But OptiEdge Dynamics doesn’t exist. And it’s just one in a series of similarly named companies that filed fake DMCA takedown requests to Google around the same time last year.
All these complaints had one thing in common: they targeted articles, reviews and social media posts containing criticism of WikiFX.
Read the full WikiEXPOSÉ (sorry) here.
As I dug deeper, I discovered this is nothing new.
I spoke with a two non-profits in the U.S. that have tracked these abuses and learned it’s a tactic that’s been used by individuals, governments and companies to protect their reputations for decades.
And there are few consequences when offenders get caught.
Find out more about how it works, and some ideas for improving the reporting system, here.
Cheers,
Callan
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About Scamurai
Scamurai Research is a one-man investigative outfit based in Hong Kong focusing on scams, fraud, and consumer rights.
It dives into digital snake oil of every flavour, from influencer grifts and scam compounds in Southeast Asia to money laundering networks and shady operations on the dark web.
Scamurai is fiercely independent. No puff pieces. No PR fluff. No sponsored content. I will not take money to shill your shitty projects.
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