Criminals use crawler tools to capture review information and virtual mobile phone numbers, and then use harassment and inducement methods to persuade negative reviews to be deleted.
After a consumer left a negative review anonymously, he received harassing phone calls from the "business"
Report from this newspaper (Reporter Wang Jiajun) "After I anonymously wrote a negative review, I received a call from a 'merchant' urging me to delete it. It was so scary!" On September 8, Ms. Wang, a consumer in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, told reporters, "The other party said on the phone that if the negative review was deleted, he would be given a red envelope as compensation, but I refused, and then I chose to call the police. After a police investigation, I found out that the call was from a criminal pretending to be a merchant. Currently, the criminal has been prosecuted."
Recently, the People's Court of Gongshu District, Hangzhou concluded a criminal case involving the use of crawler software to illegally obtain data from a food delivery platform. A group of criminal gangs disguised as food delivery agents used a plug-in crawler tool called "Delete Kuai" to illegally capture more than 100,000 consumer orders and review information, and then used harassment and inducement to persuade consumers to delete negative reviews.
In February 2024, Zhou, the owner of a stir-fry restaurant in Hangzhou, received a sales call: "Hello boss, we can help deal with the negative reviews of takeaways in your store, for 500 yuan for 30 reviews."
At that time, Lao Zhou's store received negative reviews one after another, and his online business was significantly affected. With the mentality of giving it a try, he added the other party's WeChat account to complete the transfer. In just two days, the number of negative reviews on the store dropped by nearly 80%. After "tasting the sweetness", Lao Zhou chose to "cooperate" in the long term.
It is reported that the group registered an information technology company, externally packaged to provide stores with "goodwill improvement" business, and internally set up data clerks, customer service and other positions with a clear division of labor. On the one hand, the gang purchased the "Delete Fast" plug-in crawler tool from upstream channels; on the other hand, it actively pushed business to takeout merchants, using the gimmick of quickly clearing negative reviews to charge a single service fee or a monthly or quarterly fee.
According to the original privacy protection design of the platform, the evaluation database and the order user database are isolated from each other. The merchant backend can only browse anonymous evaluation content and cannot obtain the contact information of the evaluation consumers. This plug-in software bypasses platform security protection, opens up isolated data interfaces, and batches captures negative reviews, order records, and consumer virtual mobile phone numbers of target stores to accurately match anonymous negative reviews with evaluator information.
After obtaining the data, the customer service staff of this group called the consumers who wrote negative reviews and tried hard to induce users to delete the negative reviews by apologizing and issuing red envelopes. Some consumers were unbearable and chose to delete their reviews.
From September 2023 to March 2024, the gang illegally obtained a total of more than 120,000 consumer orders, reviews, virtual numbers and other data through technical means, and illegally made more than 1.43 million yuan in profits by selling negative review deletion services.
After trial, the court sentenced Wang and four other defendants to fixed-term imprisonment ranging from two to three years for the crime of illegally obtaining computer information system data, with probation applicable, fines, and the recovery of illegal gains.
Zhu Ke, a partner at Beijing Jingyu Law Firm, pointed out that in this type of black product chain that spends money to delete bad reviews, some businesses still spend money to purchase services even though they know that the other party is using illegal means, which poses legal risks. Zhu Ke also reminded consumers that if they encounter harassment by deleting negative reviews, they should pay attention to keeping call recordings and chat records, complain to the platform in a timely manner, and call the police to protect their rights when necessary. In addition, food delivery platforms should also continue to strengthen technical protection, seal data leakage loopholes, and jointly cut off the breeding ground for black products on the Internet.
"Worker Daily" (September 10, 2026, Page 04)
