blog.mocality.co.ke
Here's the URL: http://blog.mocality.co.ke/2012/01/13/google-what-were-you-thinking/
- "Large human effort" doesn't seem like Google's style - a screen scrape for info would be faster for them, and I'd assume that they already have tools built to do that.
- If the callers are lying about being affiliated with mocality, then why can't we assume that they might also be lying about being from Google?
- Google would likely have the entire site indexed and cached already, so there's very little reason for them to get actual people to manually screen-scrape the live site.
- OK, the second wave is coming from a Google IP, but why wasn't the first wave coming from one?
Yeah, it looks pretty bad, but this type of behaviour is so atypical of Google. It seems almost laughable to make the assumption that it's anything other than scammers trying to take advantage of Google announcements to try to make a quick/easy buck by selling Google services as an affiliate.
1. Google doesn't offer website creation. 2. Google doesn't charge for low-traffic hosting. 3. Google wouldn't setup your website via email.
They've done a similar action in France few months ago.
The guys who said coming from Google were probably a partner of the operation.
There is much in that transcript which is inconsistent and even contradictory to any available information on the "Getting Kenyan Businesses online" site.
They have tools in google apps for making pages/simple sites, but everything about the call stinks of scam.
> Caller: Twenty one days. We're going to develop the website within twenty one days
When has google ever "developed websites" for independent companies?
Caller: XXXXX, and do you have a gmai account?*
Business owner: yes, I do have a gmail account.
Caller: Kindly give me your gmail account.
...
Caller: ... you will be given a personal password which you can use to log in and make changes in case you want to.
...
Caller: ... For photos, I will give you my gmail account so you can forward to me either the business logo or the photos you feel have nice looking clothes that can attract customers.
Also, why ask for a gmail username, and then say later "Well we'll send you a username and password once we're done". It doesn't make any sense.
Oh well, I assume that at some point, Google will be forced to respond, will give a big "What the hell, guys, this wasn't us", and then everyone will look sheepish for a while until a year later where some blogger will stumble on it again, and try to expose the truth of "google being evil in africa".
And I suspect they aren't, as a company. Even though these were Google employees, as Google has admitted, I doubt they were acting in accordance with anyone sufficiently high up in the corporate hierarchy.
The upsell is the part that makes me suspicious, because that doesn't sound like the type of thing that Google would do.
My guess is this. It is someone claiming to be Google and selling a service that is actually free. That's a pretty common thing to see in Africa, in Rwanda we see people 'selling' Google Apps for domains all the time.
The WHOIS lookup does give me pause though.
The only reason why those IPs even got exposed is because of the thorough investigation Mocality has made (or, claims to have made): After the first wave of confused calls by their customers, they cross-checked their logs and found one IP with an uncommon UA accessing all these records, then they served a fake phone number to that IP and confirmed that whoever was making these fraudulent calls was indeed operating from that IP and claiming to be Google in cooperation with Mocality.
Now it could be that these are scammers that found a clever way to proxy through Google on the off-chance that Mocality would do this investigation and evidence would continue to point to Google? Ok I get "pretending to be someone else" is scamming 101, but "pretending to be someone else when the person you're pretending to be cooperating with finds out about and the scam is pretty much exposed" it just sounds like an incredible amount of trouble for an eventuality that is very unlikely and even then it doesn't seem to help much?
"No, let's somehow proxy through Google so that if Mocality becomes suspicious and tracks us they'll think it's Google and the whole Internet will get confused and the people of HN will get into arguments ... mwuahahahaha ... excellent ..."
Can't you see, this is what Google wants us to think! ;-)
It makes me believe that it is Google, though I still find the monthly hosting charge thing a bit strange, because I can't find any mention of that on their site.
Apart from the false information about Mocality, does Google using their directory to do these cold calls actually violate Mocality's Terms of Use?
Really curious to see Google's response. Joe Muchera (head of Google Kenya) says he's looking into it. That not being an immediate dismissal makes me think it is indeed a Google initiative, though one that went off the rails.
We get SEO and "host your website" scam calls now and again (maybe 2 or 3 times a month) - since my boss went to an "SEO & Hosting workshop" sigh - and it sounds a lot like some of them.
How so? I read it and it looked like one of those crappy scams? How does this strike you as a legitimate Google employee?
When we started this investigation, I thought that we’d catch a rogue call-centre employee, point out to Google that they were violating our Terms and conditions (sections 9.12 and 9.17, amongst others), someone would get a slap on the wrist, and life would continue.
The post says that, -if- Google is doing what someone pretending to be Google is apparently doing, then Google would be violating its own T&C's.
Please read carefully so as not to turn a hypothetical statement into an inaccurate fact.
> -if- Google is doing what someone pretending to be Google is apparently doing
We don't know if it was Google or someone pretending to be Google. However, to make jontas's statement neutral:
> The post mentions that the alleged Google team was violating their T&Cs:
I think that transcript essentially proves that it wasn't Google. Everything he says about the program is completely wrong. I'll just pick out the things that are indisputably wrong, there is more that I would argue is wrong but may be viewed differently by others. You've already mentioned the false information about Mocality that the caller uses, so I don't need to repeat that.
"[The domain will be] ww.your business.CO.KE" No, it will be www.your business.kbo.co.ke. This is something very important, you get a subdomain of Google's Kenyan Business Online site kbo.co.ke.
"Twenty one days. We’re going to develop the website within twenty one days" No. Google's KBO does not develop the websites themselves, they provide a "Business Sitebuilder tool" that allows you to do it yourself.
"XXXXX dot XXXXX at gmail dot com." This should be @google.com not @gmail.com.
"and also we go on facebook. People who log into facebook can see the clothes you are selling." No. Google's KBO does not do anything with Facebook.
"When someone is on facebook, they’ll see your ad there." Again, no. Google is not giving you advertising space on Facebook.
"Ok, there’s a small fee for hosting of Ksh. 200 per month. [...] Only that for hosting. You know hosting is different from developing." No, there is no hosting fee. The only possible fee is an optional one if you want your own domain and it isn't 200 per month.
There's more but I think that should give you the general idea. Given just this transcript and comparing it to the details of Google's program at kbo.co.ke I would say that this caller is definitely not working for Google but is rather a scammer. In fact, in this transcript the caller basically walks through the steps needed to use the Business Sitebuilder tool. This explains how the business who didn't agree to the thing would end up with a site anyway, the scammer did it while on the phone. Now, I haven't considered the IP logs, but my best guess for that is that it is coming from Google Translate as discussed elsewhere.
Edit: I should clarify. I am not certain that Google was not involved with this, it's more that I am convinced that that particular caller wasn't working for Google. While I am unconvinced that these callers worked for Google, there is some rather damning evidence.
I bet it's pretty common everywhere, I know it happens in Sweden regularly, although the scam companies are shut down pretty quickly over here.
You haven't worked with their sales team then. Sales people (Commissionus Salesdroidicus :-) live and breath to win, and winning means creating leads, converting leads, and booking business.
Hopefully the folks inside Google who believe in transparency and doing business competitively but honestly, will be able to pressure the teams who endorse this sort of activity.
The next step will be the more interesting one. Do they they stop scraping Mocality? Do they enter into a dialog to actually partner with them? Or do they start using Tor nodes to scrape the site and stop telling people they are from Google?
When that next chapter plays out the true nature of the business is revealed.
This kind of thing is going to happen occasionally with global organisations, but Google needs to do something public quickly to make it clear that this is against policy.
I don't want them to do "evil" things. But they do. People are blind to this and need a wake up call.
EDIT: The downvotes only serve to prove my point
This is exactly where their undeserved reputation is harmful. It lets them get away with things that other corporations wouldn't be able to.
If what the blog described is true. Then Google did Evil. It does not matter which branch of Google. If Microsoft did the same, they wouldn't be defended half as much as Google is being.
Google is no more or less evil (or hypocritical) than other corporations that size.
Exactly my point Therefore their "does no evil" reputation is undeserved.
At no point did I specify that Google is more evil than any other company, but only that their reputation is undeserved, and people need waking up to this fact. If this latest action was sanctioned by head office, then Googles "does no evil" reputation becomes impossible to defend.
The only real use of 'public opinion' is trolling people with their own cognitive dissonance. Without strong evidence, you just sound whiny.
Everybody. Every single person who has ever existed and every single person who will ever exist.
PS - it may surprise you, but there are PLENTY of people on Hacker News who don't think Google is the epitome of all that is good.
"Did you not do so well in your interview there?"
Pot, meet kettle.
Anyway, at this point, in the spirit of George Orwell[2], I consider it to be a dying metaphor, and have no desire to put it into my writing. Hence my desire for alternatives. So, first off, there is the word "hypocrite". And then if you want a clever thing to say, I don't think "You see the speck in your brother's eye but ignore the plank in your own" will become obsolete, at least for a while. (As long as wood is used for construction, it will probably be put into planks, and people will probably encounter them at some point in their lives. And I don't think "plank" has any competing meanings at the moment.)
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pot_calling_the_kettle_black
[2] "Politics and the English Language". In particular, do a text search for "dying metaphors". http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm
First result for "pot": http://www.amazon.com/Cuisinart-619-16-Nonstick-Hard-Anodize...
I think you need to re-adjust your filter :)
In this thread, for example, the only defence is people questioning whether it is actually Google doing this.
That's reasonable; Google is a major target for scammers. I reckon we (a UK ISV) get about 2-3 calls a month from "Google" offering us various services. If you dig a bit they might admit to being "partnered with Google"; but it's all bullshit.
It doesn't seem an unreasonable assumption that the same might have happened here.
I don't, however, seeing anyone defending what has happened...
(I'm not being sarcastic with these examples. Gmail was terrible for Hotmail -- it was a lot better and nobody wanted Hotmail anymore. Chrome is similar; it gained traction a lot faster than Firefox, and is stealing developer mindshare. If you are Microsoft or Mozilla, I can see how this might be "evil". But if we compare it to the Holocaust...)
That is false. The cause of my reaction is actually revealed here quite explicitly:
trying to make profit at the expense of others.
The enterprise we're all engaged in on HN is making profit, paid for by someone else. This is a good thing, because a buyer's willingness to pay for a product signifies how important that product is to him. If someone is willing to give me a lot of money for something, it's because he thinks my product is going to improve his situation at least to that degree. Thus, if someone is making a lot of profit (honestly), it's prima facie evidence that they are delivering that much value to their customers.
And no, that's not corporatist propaganda. It's a necessary logical consequence of the idea that people who are free to choose, will make the choice that serves their own needs better. If we can assume that, it all follows automatically.
EDIT: I wasn't going to add this, but can't restrain myself. The line "your disagreement only proves my point" is perhaps one of the worst gambits I can imagine in a debate, possibly only surpassed by "they're just jealous". A person's agreement or disagreement has absolutely no bearing on the veracity of a statement.
By my statement, "they're just another rich corporation trying to make profit at the expense of others," I made no judgement on whether or not this is a good thing.
I was trying to point out that they're no different to any other company. That they're motivated by profit, and do things that people consider to be evil in the pursuit of that profit. This is why I think they're undeserving of their reputation.
People are too quick to make accusations of anti-capitalism around here. Especially when it's to defend a company that they like. Especially when said company has an undeserved reputation for being all nice and fluffy. Bringing us back to my point of their rep being harmful.
I have no vendetta against them. You're seeing something that isn't there. The reason you're seeing it, is because of their undeserved reputation as being less evil than other companies. You're merely demonstrating my point, yet again.
I could assume that, but I couldn't keep a straight face while doing it! :-D
What planet are you from? This one we call "Earth" is inhabited by monkeys that habitually make irrational choices that are not the best or even harmful to themselves and others around them.
Rational free market forces are a fairytale, I can't believe you seriously made that argument. It's just as "out there" as the pacifist idea that if only we'd all be nice to each other we'd have world peace, or the anarchist idea that if only we'd just all work together, we wouldn't need government. Did you know Santa's not real either?
monkeys that habitually make irrational choices that are not the best or even harmful to themselves and others around them
First, let's throw out the "monkeys" bit. Again, you're falling back to a style of argumentation designed to inflame emotions, but in fact adds no rational content to the discourse. If this were a debate competition, I'd ding you for it.
But more importantly, your assertion that the choices are not the best, etc., is unknowable by you -- yet you assert it as fact. These discussions always seem to assume that all actors ought to be working from the same set of values, yet that's clearly not the case. For example, if I choose a "live fast, die young" lifestyle, the choices I'll make -- BASE jumping, etc. -- may seem absurdly risky to you, but in fact, they really do bring to me a greater return than the alternative.
You can learn a lot more about this in Mises' Human Action. He shows how each person's actions can only be viewed as a black box, the rest of us have no way to gainsay them (nor right to do so, but that's a different discussion). Indeed, sometimes a person's motivations aren't even known to that person himself, but that does not prove that they're not there. Also, even when people are wrong in their weighing of the costs and benefits, that in itself is a rational action, because the cost of gaining greater knowledge or doing deeper analysis itself skews the computation (kinda like Heisenberg uncertainty, in Economics, I guess).
What's worse is that the idea that people do not act in their own best interest is generally attended by the conclusion that there needs to be some authority to watch over us. It's clearly bad to try to fit all of us into boxes of the same size and shape, but it's unavoidable from this approach. But more to the point, it doesn't actually provide a solution, because if we postulate that we're unable to correctly make our own decisions, then one must also conclude (in spades!) that nobody will be able to correctly make decisions for another person (or large groups of them).
And (in a bit of admitted snark -- I'll let myself get away with it because I'm labeling it as such) there's every reason to believe, judging by their own lives, that those people who our system has making these decisions for the masses are doing a worse job than the individuals would themselves.
If Google's management is innocent, then they need to prove so, and show it by acting ethically as described above.
Mnemotechnic for a proper apology: regret, responsibility, and reform.
Hi Stefan – apologies if I’ve missed something, but the only solid proof I can see that this is actually run by Google is that the IP address some calls came from was assigned to Google.
Last year Mark Turner was concerned that the Department of Defense was listening in on his phone calls because of an IP address that later turned out to not belong to them at all, but (I believe) was being squatted on by Sprint. Couldn’t the same thing be happening here? http://www.markturner.net/2011/11/08/why-is-the-defense-depa...
I wonder whether the scammers aren’t actually employed by Google and are simply out to make a quick buck by pretending they are.
Can anyone speak to the technical aspects of his analysis? I'm not seeing any truly compelling proof that this is run by Google. Just the one IP address that's registered to Mountain View.
I trust Mocality's technical chops enough to believe that the IP traffic is coming from where they say it's coming from.
As additional proof, the callers claim to be from Google, and Getting Kenyan Businesses Online is a genuine Google initiative. So a lot of things wouldn't add up if it turned out not to be Google behind it.
I agree with this.
the callers claim to be from Google, and Getting Kenyan Businesses Online is a genuine Google initiative
Claiming to be a member of something legitimate on a phonecall is scamming 101 - it's usually very hard for the person on the other end of the line to verify it immediately.
BUT I do want to point out that relying on what unverified people say on the phone is very bad practice, and leads to an enormous number of social engineering security problems.
edit: i'm also not saying google is NOT behind it, im just saying wait to hear all the facts.
Perhaps I'm trying too hard to find a way out for Google, but this doesn't add up for me. Things like the Google callers giving out gmail.com addresses rather than their google.com addresses (transcript page 8).
Must have been submitted at least a hundred times this morning.
Google needs to respond now!
Let's assume that Google chose to put boots on the ground - what then is the most efficient way for those people to build a directory? It seems to me that utilizing Mocality's existing directory would at least be considered - Google's modus operandi has always been aggregating whatever is on the web and presenting it as their product.
"Getting Kenyan Businesses Online" is a Google project and among it's partner benefits are:
Opportunity to offer relevant value-added
products/services that bolt onto the Google offering
in support of SMB business growth
Ability to run own events and drive participation
across own customer base co-branded with Google
The Next Web's Coverage of Google's kickoff stated:
According to Google, together with its partners, “GKBO will provide free or subsidized services to help businesses to use web and internet technologies. This includes supporting organizations that provide assistance for small and medium businesses, as well as other industry organizations that are aligned with the aims of the initiative.”
Note that the services are not necessarily free and that Google will partner with whoever it sees fit.
[http://thenextweb.com/africa/2011/09/12/google-launches-prog...]
There's nothing in the allegations which is inconsistent with Google's M.O. of aggregating other people's data on the web and encouraging people to put more information online.
I also don't believe that they have actually done this (but it'll be interesting to see this story unfold).
And that's before considering the uncertainty involved in a buyout and the relative certainty of acquiring the information directly off the web (and that this is Google's standard method for acquiring data to aggregate).
Personally, I currently am leaning towards the belief that was Google subcontracting or partnering with boots on the ground, and the boots on the ground found the most efficient way of fulfilling Google's contract requirements - the move from Kenya to India is somewhat indicative of this in my mind.
I'd be curious to know who's flagging it though.
http://boingboing.net/2012/01/13/google-fraudulently-solicit...
.co.ke for companies .or.ke for NGOs .me.ke for personal websites and emails .ac.ke for academic institutions
I wonder if HN had a big spam issue in the past from Kenyan domains?
Now to go buy some co.ke (domains) to amuse myself.
normal companies ban employees from participating in online discussions about their company certinaly at British telecom uk.telecom and alt.2600 where off-limits.
Though I was asked by our press office to post an oficial respose to alt.2600 once but SD (security directoy) put a stop to that :-)
Here. I set up a page at http://lab2.gibsonandlily.com/google.html
Then I ran it through google translation services. Here is the result in apache's log:
74.125.16.18 - - [13/Jan/2012:10:45:37 -0600] "GET /google.html HTTP/1.1" 200 327 "http://translate.google.com/translate_p?hl=en&sl=fr&... "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1) AppleWebKit/535.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/16.0.912.75 Safari/535.7,gzip(gfe)
Look familiar? This one is tossing up windows NT, which is strange, but it doesn't seem like a stretch that some of the machines at google for stuff like this are running linux.
The scam here isn't being done by google, it's just a run-of-the-mill scammer scamming and using google's name.
Dearest mocotality. Turning on referals in apache logs and you'll see where on google this is coming from (if you care to).
Here is how:
in: /etc/apache2/apache2.conf (or whereever your apache configuration sits) change the "Logformat" option to the following:
LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %O \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\"" combined
and then use option:
CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access_log combined
(or whatever log path you want).
A scammer selling a Google service for which their is no affiliate program?
I wouldn't file this one away due to having a Google crawler on an IP address that’s on the same B block (that's like having the same car brand, not the same make/model)... An IP address that's not even related to the original investigation, but to some anecdote at the very end of the story.
We need more info about the service being sold, and how it's being sold, who's the billing party, etc.
The only real tie to google here is that some person on a telephone used google's name.
Caller: No, it’s absolutely free, free of charge. Ok, there’s a small fee for hosting of Ksh. 200 per month.
This seems like an incredibly simple scam, and it looks like blhack's nailed it.
There is nothing connecting this to Google apart from that one IP address. I could phone up half a dozen companies and claim to be from Google, too. Hell, I get phone calls from "Windows Security Centre" every few weeks telling me to do something to my non-existant XP install.
This is actually your user agent, isn't it? Google is probably forwarding your user agent string, so that you get a page that is optimized for your browser.
The machines that this scammer is using run linux, which explains why the user agent reported this both when they were reading the pages directly, and when the started using google translate.
Neat. I hope they follow up by taking my advice and including the referal so we get to see exactly where it's coming from.
Not that I find it unbelieveable that Google, multinational megacorp, could and would do this thing, but this evidence still seems kinda circumstantial. I mean, here's hypothesis two: One compromised PC in Google's HQ, running a proxy.
http://blog.mocality.co.ke/2012/01/13/google-what-were-you-t...
There are many people who are flumoxed and confused by computers that we've trained them to let most of their guard down, and scammers can get away with "Oh our system is broken, just use this paypal address" will probably work.
What I find more interesting if everything is true, is that they have cheap manual workers in India doing the scrapping manually to then cold call. It means that if their "crawlers" are not smart enough, they are ready to go "manual" to enter a market.
For me this is really an interesting piece of news and this is where I am a bit afraid of Google hegemony.
http://blog.mocality.co.ke/2012/01/13/google-what-were-you-t...
If it was some other entity, why'd they sell Google-built websites?
One other way you can check is by looking at the organisation handle in the WHOIS - it's GOGL, which is the same org handle as you'll find on all their IP addresses if you WHOIS them. That ties up with the ARIN site:
http://whois.arin.net/rest/org/GOGL
I've done a fair bit of network engineering and I'm convinced that this is actually a Google address.
Those IP addresses are assigned to Google.
(Obvious caveat, just cause they're assigned to Google doesn't mean this is a Google mandated operation. Other explainations: Rougue Employees, Rouge Outsources, compromised PC in Google office, Google App Engine, etc.)
Rough details:
Google doesn't develop business web sites, but the callers were offering that service.
Obtaining their business contact database, and misrepresenting themselves, in a very un-Google way.
Since early November 2011. And the call operation switched to India when spotted.
The businesses being called were all in Kenya. KENYA - now why does that ring a bell?
Google admits it happened, but is vague about who did it. "a team of people working on a Google project"
Hmmm... You'd think if there was a clear relationship that Google could admit to, they would have. I smell something a bit more intense than mere bad business choices.
How about this:
Suppose you were a current US President, who (for whatever reason) very very strongly desired to eliminate (or 'modify') a specific piece of paper held at the Coast Province General Hospital, Kenya. A birth certificate, from 1961. This one: http://everist.org/pics/Obama_bc/lucas_Obama_bc.jpg
Someone comes up with the bright idea to offer a document digitizing and cloud archiving service to the hospital. Just to get hands-on for that one piece of paper.
But as cover... you'd need something much more general. Like offering web hosting to all businesses in Kenya. Comes with document scanning at low low prices! You can trust us, we’re GOOGLE! And we are associates of your widely liked Mocality.
So why now? Because finally a lawsuit about Obama's eligibility established legal standing and made it to the supreme court. Document discovery begins. Stuff's about to hit the ventilators...
20120113 VERY QUIETLY OBAMA’S CITIZENSHIP CASE REACHES THE SUPREME COURT http://www.pakalertpress.com/2012/01/09/very-quietly-obamas-...
That and other cases have been working their way through slowly. Takes months, and someone maybe saw a need and activated some emergency contingency plans.
Just a thought. There’s always a reason, and it's often not the most obvious one.
Why would any actual Google team, even rogue, offer web services Google simply does not do?
However the second instance is from part of a /16 IPv4 block assigned to Google. It could just be a compromised proxy on someone's machine.
We were mortified to learn that a team of people working on a Google project improperly used Mocality’s data and misrepresented our relationship with Mocality to encourage customers to create new websites.
We’ve already unreservedly apologised to Mocality. We’re still investigating exactly how this happened, and as soon as we have all the facts, we’ll be taking the appropriate action with the people involved.
I wonder if its also dishonest people working in search results...
They are not perfect, but they seem very transparent by admitting it.
What we know:
1: Google employees or contractors or partners did this (called Mocality listed businesses, said they were from Google/Mocality and sold websites etc.)
2: Apparently they were a rogue person/team/unit inside of Google
3: But there seemed to be a lot of callers involved
4: They moved the calling unit to India
5: Google HQ now knows about this
Speculation
1: Nobody in Google HQ knew about this at the time
2: The person or people involved in Google Kenya were quite high up to be able to motivate that many people
3: The India team was not part of Google's team. (or perhaps they were). They got involved because the heat was on in Kenya.
4: Mocality suffered a loss here (e.g. use of data to be used to solicit businesses against their terms and conditions), the people doing so were at Google and representing Google and thus Google has opened themselves up for a considerable legal mess.
5: The Nigerian courts and legal system are too hard/expensive/slow for Mocality and Google to navigate, so Mocality have turned to PR to motivate Google to change.
6: That approach is working, and it should be working. Google needs to do something urgently to fix this.
7: Getting rid of the partners is insufficient remedy for Mocality. There needs to be some compensation involved for the solicitation of a considerable percentage of Mocality's listings.
8: Ultimately the best way for Google to handle this is to purchase Mocality.
Questions
1:Was the India team a Google team one or outsourced to some rascals there?
2: What will Google do to compensate Mocality of this scam?
3: Has Mocality retained a lawyer in Nigeria, have they formally asked Google to Cease and Desist and requested compensation?
4: Why has Google not approached Mocality wrt purchase of their data?
5: Who has the relationship with any businesses that did sign up to the scammers? What will happen to that relationship and to the money paid?
Kenya is sorta different country.. :)
text-transform: uppercase;
There is a saying in spanish that roughly translates "beware of unrequested affirmations"
I think it applies here..