Feb 07, 2022 13:15:00

How a company that erases bad publicity on the net removes articles that are disadvantageous to customers with false DMCA and legal notice is exposed under the sun

An NGO specializing in the protection of digital rights and data is what companies are doing to remove disadvantageous information from customers online after receiving offers from politicians and business people. Revealed by

Qurium .

Dark Ops Undercovered: Episode I – Eliminalia – Qurium Media Foundation
https://www.qurium.org/forensics/dark-ops-undercovered-episode-i-eliminalia/

Exposed documents reveal how the powerful clean up their digital past using a reputation laundering firm --Rest of World
https://restofworld.org/2022/documents-reputation-laundering-firm-eliminalia/

It all started when Quurium received an email from an organization claiming to be a law firm stating that the website operated by Qurium violates the law. The email states that the Quurium-operated websites Maka Angola and The Elephant violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) , and immediately dismiss the content. I was asked to remove it.

Quurium, who was suspicious of the email, investigated it and found that the email was sent from inside a building under the jurisdiction of the European Commission in Brussels, Belgium, but it was just a rental office and the email was an official European Commissioner. It turned out that it was not sent by the organization of the association. In addition, there were suspicious points such as mail going through multiple servers such as France and Ukraine. Ultimately, it becomes clear that the email comes from an organization called 'Eliminalia' that has corporate registrations in multiple countries.

Eliminalia claims to be a reputation management company and is appealing as 'to erase your past and help build your future.' Upon receiving a customer's request, first make a copy of the content you want to delete on the website, change the time stamp of the creation date before the original, and then file a DMCA claim with Google. Is revealed by Qurium's research.

In addition, using the domain obtained from the rental office mentioned above, a method to improve credibility by sending a deletion request email based on fake GDPR, or creating a large number of copy sites to search the original site He also said that he had adopted a method of lowering the result display order.

In addition, journalist NPO Rest of World investigated Eliminalia, and found that its customers include the former Foreign Minister of the Dominican Republic, individuals and businessmen charged with cryptocurrency issues, and about 17,000 cases. We know that there was a request to remove websites and YouTube videos.

However, a May 2014 decision of the European Federal Court of Justice admitted that users have the 'right to be forgotten' to require search engines such as Google to delete search results using search keywords that include personal names. Has been done. Eliminalia is also developing a business based on this ruling, and a spokeswoman for the company said, 'I'm impersonating us because our competitors lose our trust.' I sent it. ' He also said that the list of customers discovered by Rest of World 'has no contractual relationship with any of them.'

Rest of World said, 'Since Qurium's investigation, the creation of fake websites used to sue for piracy has become more sophisticated. The DMCA and GDPR are designed to be used like this. And policymakers and courts have not taken significant steps to deal with the industry, 'he said, emphasizing the need for regulation.