Doug Porter reports false accusations on the Internet against San Diego reporters and editors

I am delighted that Doug Porter is taking an interest in false accusations and in the South Bay. Ir appears this issue finally hit close to home for him when members of his own profession are involved.

Doug completely ignores the contributions of citizen bloggers (like myself) who have reported in detail on education in South Bay. Doug does not seem to be interested in cases of harassment or even shocking First Amendment violations against citizen bloggers. I was targeted in much the same way that upsets Doug so much when the victims are "real" reporters or editors. Link

Doug has made clear he's not interested in shockingly abusive First Amendment cases like this one.

Doug, if you're looking for people in South Bay who make outrageously false and malicious accusations, you're going to have a very long list of suspects.

Internet ‘Predator’ Scam Targets Local Journalists

Blackmail or Revenge are Plausible Motives 

By Doug Porter
San Diego Free Press
April 6, 2017

Over the past week, a dozen San Diego reporters and editors have been listed on PredatorsWatch.com, a website infamous for labeling innocent people as pedophiles or child abusers.

Among those targeted were editors and reporters with the San Diego Union-Tribune, NBC7, the San Diego Reader, and the Southwestern College Sun.

San Diego Free Press editor Barbara Zaragoza (who has contributed articles to the Reader as a freelancer) was notified via a Google Alert email on April 4, which included the linked headline claiming she had been “arrested for having sex with boy, child abuse.”

The site, registered in Belize and owned by ‘retired’ revenge porn king Scott Breitenstein, skirts libel laws by claiming listings are submitted by third parties, taking advantage of  Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which protects Facebook and similar sites when user posts are obscene or illegal material.

Those listed on the site are offered the opportunity for removal by calling from a list of ‘reputation management’ sites, who then offer to negate the posting, charging fees as high as $1200.

Zaragoza called several attorneys looking for help and was unable to find one with experience in this area. She called the San Diego District Attorney’s office only to be directed to a list of automated responses. 

Down The Rathole

She described, via email, attempts to deal with PredatorsWatch...

Managing Your Reputation, for a Fee

The no delisting policy

The company in question is, according to my research, highly regarded and accredited (4.5 stars) with the Better Business Bureau in Denver.

[Maura Larkins' comment: The BBB is not a reliable source for exposing abusive businesses.]

However, I also turned up numerous claims about reputation management companies being owned by or colluding with reputation ruining outfits. The world of online image repair is filled with claims and counterclaims of greatness or evil. After a while, I didn’t know who I could trust.

Typical of what I read was a negative review from an anonymous ex-employee at GlassDoor.com:

Pros

The pay wasn’t bad and you get the option to work from home, apart from that not a good thing about this company.

Cons

This company is extremely unethical. They sell you on how they help people and they sell customers on the same thing. In reality they’re the ones that put the mugshots or ripoff reports online in the first place, then extort people hundreds of thousands to get things taken down. I would never work for a company like this again, I still cringe at the thought of it.

Why This Matters [Read more.]

Other Cities, Other Instances

Detective Rob Davenport from York, Pennsylvania has been following up on a similar complaint filed by a journalist.
His research confirmed the San Diego Union-Tribune as well as a Florida newspaper owned by Tronc were also targeted in similar scams.
Basically, he explained to Barbara Zaragoza, after being put on PredatorsWatch,  journalists receive an email requesting one of their news stories be taken down from a website because it’s “fake” news.
The journalist then answers the email and the person on “the other side” says the journalist must take the article down AND they’ve already posted a lot of fake news about the author.
The journalist then communicates with a scammer-recommended agency, which asks for money to have the fake news taken down…. and then after payment, asks for more and more money, saying more money is needed in order to take it down.

...The ‘Most Dangerous Man on the Internet’

Scott Breitenstein, who lives in East Dayton, Ohio, is the mastermind behind all these sites, according to Fusion.net.

...Facing a serious decline in revenues, Breitenstein has moved on to greener pastures.

New Money Makers

From the Australian News.Com:

Steve Breitenstein, via Fusion TV

But it appears the “most dangerous man on the internet” has found other, equally vile schemes.

Known for his misogynistic sites on which he’d post nude, non-consensual photos of women (as well as personal information) submitted by their disgruntled exes, Breitenstein’s CheatersRUs, ReportMyEx, STDregistry — along with 28 additional similar sites — were responsible for humiliating countless women.

These days, the former plumber from Ohio is accused of running a business that targets men from social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, ripping their photos off to post on such sites as Predatorswatch.com, accompanied by noxious, gut-wrenching claims such as: “This man is a child rapist!”

Based on my research–I felt like I needed a shower afterward–into PredatorsWatch.com, it would appear that somebody (we’ll never know who, since all submissions are anonymous) is working through various occupations, attempting to find those most susceptible to blackmail.
From late in 2016, I found fake listings for executives with Bay Area tech companies, including Cisco, GE Digital, HP, AWS Amazon, and SKTA.   
Now it appears journalists are being targeted. I found three named from NBC7, four from the Union-Tribune, two from the Reader, and four from the Southwestern College Sun.

Why This Scam?

There may be–and this is just a theory–a South Bay connection behind these anonymous reports, since some of the reporters named have covered the area. Obviously, this doesn’t work when it comes to the named editors, but, hey, it’s a start. Revenge can be a powerful motivator.
In these days of what seems like an ever-shrinking pool of credible news reporting, this scam should also be looked at as an attack on freedom of the press.
I couldn’t help but feel when looking at pictures of Scott Breitenstein–who looks a bit like Trump minion Steve Bannon–that this could be a powerful political tool in the wrong hands. That’s one more reason that a way needs to found to shut this kind of cruel nonsense down.