Thursday, May 29, 2008

Fake blogs are illegal

From yesterday (28th May 2008) the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 law came into place.

This legislation is available to download from here:
http://www.oft.gov.uk/advice_and_resources/small_businesses/competing/protection

Of particular interest to those companies that set up fake blogs (e.g. for marketing & PR purposes that pretend to be someone else) should be this phrase about what is now illegal:

Falsely claiming or creating the impression that the trader is not acting for purposes relating to his/her trade, business, craft or profession, or falsely representing oneself as a consumer.
Various companies have tried this underhand activity in the past, so it finally looks like this practice (e.g. by Coke Zero) will come to an end in the UK!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It will be interesting to see how the industry reacts. Hopefully they will clean up their act but I do suspect that there may be some unscrupulous operators offering a service that has several degrees of separation to continue this practice.

However, if you are a PR, or Brand or anything to do with Reputation Management in your company, then anyone worth their salt will make sure that this practice does not happen!

It is worth checking that if you outsource your SEO to an agency that they do not carry out this practice.