Thursday, April 19, 2012
Arrest.org
I'll be posting a legal analysis of the Terms of Service of some of these websites soon. In the meantime, this Scribd document contains a treasure trove of information about one of these sites, arrest.org.
An Investigation Of arrests.org
Of real interest in the document is that mugshots don't actually appear to be removed from the site. Rather, the site is updating the robots.txt file to de-index pictures from Google search. Whether that is consistent with what they and the companies that offer to remove the images represent is an open question.
Here is the interesting thread from ScamInformer that led me to that document.
Monday, April 16, 2012
"Mug-Shot Industry Will Dig Up Your Past, Charge You to Bury It Again"
Back on August 2, 2011, Wired published an article discussing the mugshot industry. From the article:
In response, other SEO companies, such as RemoveSlander.com, began to advertise their ability to have these images removed. For the 'low' price of $399, RemoveSlander will work to remove your image from one mugshot site. How do they do it?
So, in effect, these companies have a symbiotic relationship with each other, with the ultimate goal of extorting money out of you.
There is something you can do. File an FTC complaint online and follow up with the agency by telephone (1-877-FTC-HELP). Let's get some attention on this.
Philip Cabibi, a 31-year-old applications administrator in Utah, sat at his computer one recent Sunday evening and performed one of the compulsive rituals of the Internet Age: the ego search. He typed his name into Google to take a quick survey of how the internet sees him, like a glance in the mirror.Arrests.org posts arrests from Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Alabama. Like any number of these sites, the operator has an impressive past of his own.
There were two LinkedIn hits, three White Pages listings, a post he made last year to a Meetup forum for Italian-Americans in the Salt Lake City area. Then, coming in 10th place — barely crawling onto the first page of search results — was a disturbing item.
“Philip Cabibi Mugshot,” read the title. The description was “Mug shot for Philip Cabibi booked into the Pinellas County jail.”
When he clicked through, Cabibi was greeted with his mug shot and booking information from his 2007 drunk-driving arrest in Florida. It’s an incident in Cabibi’s life that he isn’t proud of, and one that he didn’t expect to find prominently listed in his search results four years later, for all the world to see.
The website was florida.arrests.org, a privately run enterprise that siphons booking photos out of county-sheriff databases throughout the Sunshine State, and posts them where Google’s web crawlers can see them for the first time. Desperate to get off the site, Cabibi quickly found an apparent ally: RemoveSlander.com. “You are not a criminal,” the website said reassuringly. “End this humiliating ordeal … Bail out of Google. We can delete the mug-shot photo.”
Cabibi paid RemoveSlander $399 by credit card, and within a day, the site had come through. His mug shot was gone from florida.arrests.org, and his Google results were clean.
Florida.arrests.org is the brainchild of a computer-savvy Florida ex-con named Rob Wiggen. The 32-year-old served three years in federal prison for participating in a small-time credit-card-skimming operation (.pdf) out of a Mexican restaurant in Tallahassee.Interestingly however, the net effect of these websites has been to create a new business model. Search engine optimization, or SEO, was originally designed to help commercial businesses rise above the noise of the Internet. SEO companies began to use these techniques, however, to promote mugshot images in organic search results for some people.
When he got out of jail in 2007, he was looking for more legitimate opportunities. Last year he seized on the idea of repurposing the booking photos that Florida police departments are obliged to make public under the state’s sunshine laws.
In response, other SEO companies, such as RemoveSlander.com, began to advertise their ability to have these images removed. For the 'low' price of $399, RemoveSlander will work to remove your image from one mugshot site. How do they do it?
It turns out, though, removing mug shots from florida.arrest.org is not as labor-intensive or arcane a process as the reputation companies claim. The real trade secret is that Wiggen wants a small piece of the action.
Wiggen said he has provided RemoveSlander an URL for an automated takedown script on his site. A PayPal payment of just $9.95 will automatically purge a mug shot from the site. For an expedited removal from Google’s index, which Wiggen’s code performs through Google’s Webmaster tools interface, the fee is $19.90. Wiggen said other removal sites also make use of that same URL, but he declined to name them.
RemoveSlander “presses a button and makes a payment, and my website handles it automatically,” Wiggen said.
Wired.com tried the interface independently, and for $19.90 we removed the mugshot of a randomly chosen misdemeanor defendant, which disappeared from the site inside 10 minutes.
Wiggen said about 750 mugs have been removed from florida.arrests.org since he launched the site last year — some of them he took down himself in response to e-mail requests, but most were performed by reputation-management firms like RemoveSlander. He appears content to let those companies take the lion’s share of the mug-shot removal profits.
The bulk of florida.arrests.org’s income comes from advertising, not mug-shot removal fees, he said, declining to otherwise discuss his revenue. “I’m not getting rich,” he said.
The reputation companies, though, appear to be doing pretty well. Of the $399 that Cabibi paid to RemoveSlander, $19.90 would have wound up with the mug-shot site that exposed him in the first place, and $379.10 with the company that promised to “fight” for him. By its own count, RemoveSlander has removed more than 300 mug shots.
Wired.com asked RemoveSlander’s Jacques if it’s true he’s paying $19.90 for his $399 service. That end of the business, he said, was handled by a partner, who was not available to be interviewed. Ellis, the owner of RemoveArrest.com, would neither confirm nor deny his use of the automated takedown tool.
So, in effect, these companies have a symbiotic relationship with each other, with the ultimate goal of extorting money out of you.
There is something you can do. File an FTC complaint online and follow up with the agency by telephone (1-877-FTC-HELP). Let's get some attention on this.
Friday, April 13, 2012
The Shakedown
This is the first of a series of blog posts I hope to devote to the practice of the mugshot racket. Through these posts, I hope to bring some much needed light to this industry that has so far managed to thrive in the shadows.
Maybe you were just recently arrested. Maybe it was five, ten years ago. Regardless of when it happened, there is a good chance that your booking photograph – or mugshot – is now hosted by any one of a number of new websites devoted to publishing these “public records.”
Make no mistake. These are public records, regardless of the fact that they only report one side, and one instant, in what is usually a complex legal process. If these websites were operating as legitimate news organizations, their publication of these records would categorically be protected as free speech under the First Amendment. Most people have seen the sections of local newspapers where the police report a “blotter” of arrests the prior week, though owing to the lack of space, most papers until now haven’t included photographs as well.
But the fact of the matter is that most of these organizations, such as “Busted” (bustedmugshots.com) or Mugshots.com, are not operating as legitimate news outlets. Rather, they are taking advantage of the noble aims of state public records acts to further their illegitimate business model, and shielding themselves with claims of journalistic freedom. Instead of merely reporting arrests, these mugshot websites are taking the additional step of promoting the arrests, using search engine optimization techniques to force these pictures into the top 20, top 10, or even number one spot on the Google or Bing search results of the arrestee’s name. It is as if a local newspaper decided to run the booking photo of you on the front page with your name in bold type for weeks, months or even years to the exclusion of all other news.
In addition, these sites, unlike your local newspaper, offer to remove the picture for a fee. Some, like Mugshots.com, use third parties and a private takedown system to remove the photos, costing consumers upwards of $300. Others, like Busted, take your money directly. In effect, these sites are effectively engaged in a form of extortion. At least in its plain English definition: an attempt to gain money from consumers through the use of coercion. It is as if that same paper offered to stop printing your name if you subscribed to their service.
A lot of people jump immediately in, saying “what about my privacy?” Some of you were arrested for good reason, and took your lumps in court. Others were arrested only to have their charges dismissed. Some might have even been mistaken identity.
Regardless, you were arrested. And this is a public fact, one which is not entitled to privacy. While some states may give you avenues to pursue this as a privacy violation; for instance under such legal theories as “misappropriation of likeness” or “false light,” such suits may be of limited value in vindicating your rights.
Some may just want to pay these companies off. But beware doing so. For the same reason the government doesn’t negotiate with terrorists, neither should you attempt to pay your way out of your predicament. If you pay one site to remove your materials, there is nothing guaranteeing that they won’t pop up again on another website. In fact, it is virtually guaranteed to, considering some of these companies run multiple sites.
Moreover, before you pay them, look at the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy on some of these sites. By paying the companies, you agree to these terms; they become binding contracts which rob you of any rights you may have to contest their actions in the future. Paying these companies will effectively catch you in their web, and once there, fighting your way back out may prove difficult, if not impossible.
Probably the best option to solving this is to get the attention of law-makers and regulatory agencies whose goal it is to protect consumers. There are a number of ways you can do that:
1. Complain to the consumer protection division of your state attorney general. Many states have laws related to deceptive and unfair trade practices. Considering the flowery legal language these sites use in their Terms of Service, as well as their methods for publicizing your name, there is a valid argument that the sites are engaged in either deceptive or unfair trade practices that directly harm consumers. Google your state AG and file a complaint.
2. File a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC is the federal entity charged with protecting consumers from deceptive and unfair trade practices. If they receive enough complaints regarding this practice, they may intervene and move to corral these organizations.
3. Write your state and federal representatives. It is important to try and bring issues such as this to their attention.
As time goes on, I’ll write more about some of the specific websites involved in these schemes, discussing their practices, and compiling the news coverage of them. The important thing though is to bring their practices out into the open.
As Justice Louis Brandeis famously observed “sunshine is the best disinfectant.” So post some comments and tell us your story with these sites. Why not give these websites a taste of their own medicine?
What is the Mugshot Racket?
Make no mistake. These are public records, regardless of the fact that they only report one side, and one instant, in what is usually a complex legal process. If these websites were operating as legitimate news organizations, their publication of these records would categorically be protected as free speech under the First Amendment. Most people have seen the sections of local newspapers where the police report a “blotter” of arrests the prior week, though owing to the lack of space, most papers until now haven’t included photographs as well.
But the fact of the matter is that most of these organizations, such as “Busted” (bustedmugshots.com) or Mugshots.com, are not operating as legitimate news outlets. Rather, they are taking advantage of the noble aims of state public records acts to further their illegitimate business model, and shielding themselves with claims of journalistic freedom. Instead of merely reporting arrests, these mugshot websites are taking the additional step of promoting the arrests, using search engine optimization techniques to force these pictures into the top 20, top 10, or even number one spot on the Google or Bing search results of the arrestee’s name. It is as if a local newspaper decided to run the booking photo of you on the front page with your name in bold type for weeks, months or even years to the exclusion of all other news.
In addition, these sites, unlike your local newspaper, offer to remove the picture for a fee. Some, like Mugshots.com, use third parties and a private takedown system to remove the photos, costing consumers upwards of $300. Others, like Busted, take your money directly. In effect, these sites are effectively engaged in a form of extortion. At least in its plain English definition: an attempt to gain money from consumers through the use of coercion. It is as if that same paper offered to stop printing your name if you subscribed to their service.
What Can You Do?
Regardless, you were arrested. And this is a public fact, one which is not entitled to privacy. While some states may give you avenues to pursue this as a privacy violation; for instance under such legal theories as “misappropriation of likeness” or “false light,” such suits may be of limited value in vindicating your rights.
Some may just want to pay these companies off. But beware doing so. For the same reason the government doesn’t negotiate with terrorists, neither should you attempt to pay your way out of your predicament. If you pay one site to remove your materials, there is nothing guaranteeing that they won’t pop up again on another website. In fact, it is virtually guaranteed to, considering some of these companies run multiple sites.
Moreover, before you pay them, look at the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy on some of these sites. By paying the companies, you agree to these terms; they become binding contracts which rob you of any rights you may have to contest their actions in the future. Paying these companies will effectively catch you in their web, and once there, fighting your way back out may prove difficult, if not impossible.
Probably the best option to solving this is to get the attention of law-makers and regulatory agencies whose goal it is to protect consumers. There are a number of ways you can do that:
1. Complain to the consumer protection division of your state attorney general. Many states have laws related to deceptive and unfair trade practices. Considering the flowery legal language these sites use in their Terms of Service, as well as their methods for publicizing your name, there is a valid argument that the sites are engaged in either deceptive or unfair trade practices that directly harm consumers. Google your state AG and file a complaint.
2. File a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC is the federal entity charged with protecting consumers from deceptive and unfair trade practices. If they receive enough complaints regarding this practice, they may intervene and move to corral these organizations.
3. Write your state and federal representatives. It is important to try and bring issues such as this to their attention.
As time goes on, I’ll write more about some of the specific websites involved in these schemes, discussing their practices, and compiling the news coverage of them. The important thing though is to bring their practices out into the open.
As Justice Louis Brandeis famously observed “sunshine is the best disinfectant.” So post some comments and tell us your story with these sites. Why not give these websites a taste of their own medicine?
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