Uncovering lies in the SpyPhone world.
You’ve seen it before, a website absolutely loaded with practically an army of “as seen on – NBC, CNN, FOX NEWS, BBC, CSNBC, BB – these sites seem to have half their page filled with these logo’s and often times, the logo’s don’t lead anywhere, there was never any article written about that website to begin with, it didn’t even have permission to use the logo of that site. You may have recently heard about Samsung’s Astroturfing fiasco where Samsung was hiring contractors to write forum posts that praised Samsung devices, trashed competitors, and downplayed bad news. While that’s definitely not cool, it doesn’t come close to the lies going on in the SpyPhone world.
Why the logo jacking
The reason why companies are now logo jacking is to exploit the theory of social proof. Social Proof is basically this: if you see a person do something safely and successfully, you’ll feel more secure in doing that same thing. Where doubts might have been, they are no longer as prevalent when you see that the action it is possible. The problem occurs when the social proof is bought, or faked, then this proof is no longer accurate, and people are being lied to – problems start happening.
Examining mSpy’s social proof
Now with this understanding of what logojacking is, we’ll take a look into the SpyPhone realm to see if there’s any logojacking going on. The site being looked at will be mSpy, starting with the business testimonials banner on their home page.
Here’s A Picture of Their Banner
This banner references CNN, CNBC, The New York Times, and BBC. It also shows off some customer testimonials, from three guys.
The Cues of Scam Sites
There are cue’s that prospective customers on a product site should take into consideration when trying to determine if the product is legitimate or not.
Things to look out for,
- A forged Better Business Bureau assurance Seal leading to a real looking report
- A warranty that was too good to be true
- False business location information
- Forged newsclips from professional magazines
- Impossibly exaggerated Company sales statistics
- Universally positive, hyperbolic customer endorsements
knowing this, I started to research the testimonials located on the mSpy page.
I first tried to click on the images in the banner to read the supposed articles about mSpy, but I was unable to, turns out it was just a banner image that someone put together with photo editing software. So, I searched for each individual reference to try to find the supposed articles, manually.
The affiliated logos search
CNN – I searched the CNN website with the Keywords: mSpy to try to find any related article. I was unable to find any article mentioning mSpy.
The New York Times – I searched the NYT website with mSpy but was unable to find any article mentioning mSpy. A list of Spy articles were the result of the search, but none of those articles mentioned mSpy.
CNBC – Searching the CNBC website, I couldn’t find any article that linked to mSpy.
BBC – I searched the BBC website, and I couldn’t find any article that mentioned mSpy.
CrunchBase – I searched the CrunchBase website and found that mSpy created a profile on the CrunchBase website. While CrunchBase doesn’t directly reference mSpy, and putting the logo of CrunchBase on the mSpy testimonial section IS misleading, it doesn’t qualify as logojacking.
What it means
mSpy hasn’t been mentioned in any of the corporations that they claimed they had been referenced in. The only website that I was able to find mSpy information on was CrunchBase, where mSpy created a corporate profile.
Customer Testimonials
mSpy also features several customer testimonials. The reviews look like they might be legitimate, although it should be noted that it’s very common for companies to outsource people to write reviews for them, and we’ve seen that mSpy has a track record for faking references – So, it’s not out of the question. If the customer testimonials ARE in fact legit, then kudos to them. Otherwise, with their history of lies, prospective customers might want to think twice.