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Comment by causality0 | Hacker News Reader

Not even that is risk-free. I was doxxed by a developer after Google's idiotic real-name policy put me in his crosshairs for my one-star review.

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I had an extension installed that would pop up a PayPal donation page whenever it updated, (I think it may have been a JSON pretty printer? Don't entirely remember). Whatever, it was a good extension and I can understand that.

One week it updated basically every day, and so every morning at work I was greeted with a PayPal donation page for this extension author. After the 4th update I uninstalled it and left a 1-star review saying an otherwise good extension had now gotten far too spammy.

The developer actually emailed me asking me to take down the review, and tried making the case that it wasn't spam, they just had a reason to update it so many times.

I updated my review to say the extension author is emailing anyone leaving a one star review.

Tip/suggestion: Make a separate Google account with fake name/suername for reviews on Google.

I have a few Google accounts. Only one is my actual name. Especially for games and reviews I use an aliased account (just like I use an alias here). Google can still track me I guess (IP) but a single dev will never find who UnrealName UnrealSurname is. And I do tend to leave brutally honest and detailed feedbacks whether positive or negative.

Let us hope this little trick will not get all of your accounts suspended without recourse.

You can't create a Google account these days without a phone number, and you can't reuse phone numbers. Worse, in my country, you need to register to get a phone number (anonymous /unregistered sims were outlawed a few years ago).

You can get digital disposable phone numbers online

Google/Facebook block those.

I was just able to create a new google account with no phone number.

Interesting. Must be a geographic restriction.

You don't need a phone number. But it is not obvious how you can get an account without one.

This is understandable, though it then creates a new challenge: problems that have always existed with hearsay and rumour are greatly exaggerated by the speed and reach of modern technology, and now we have reviews that come from unverifiable sources, which can cause real damage to a person or business, who in turn may have no way to defend themselves even if the review is malicious or inaccurate.

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