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Comment by Flammy | Hacker News Reader

It may no longer be happening. Googling "Yelp extortion" will get you plenty of news hits, but this may have caused them to change their practices.

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It's actually extraordinary how many "Yelp extortion" claims I've seen without a single bit of proof. It's not at all difficult to record a telephone conversation with a Yelp representative.

I've seen some thoughts about this:

- Some of the businesses claiming "Yelp extortion" actually deserve their bad reviews.

- Some of the businesses claiming "Yelp extortion" posted fake positive reviews. Unbeknownst to them, Yelp bots automatically detected and removed the fake reviews. Later, after rejecting a call from a Yelp rep asking to advertise, the business owner decides to check their Yelp page and sees that their fake reviews are gone, incorrectly deducing that Yelp is extorting them.

It's not at all difficult to record a telephone conversation with a Yelp representative.

I was at Radio Shack just yesterday looking for a way to do this. They didn't have a solution. Also, it's illegal where I am unless I advertise it.

So if I were to get a call right now from somebody and needed to record it I'm not sure what to do. Any suggestions?

I personally use an app called TapeACall. You could also just put your call on loudspeaker and record it with another device.

Google "chemtrails" you get lots of hits too.

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