If you’re going to commit a crime (or at least do something fraudulent), you might want to consider the evidence you’ve left all over the internet.
Yesterday a popular internet marketer and blogger announced he was suing a Google employee for fraudulent use of a trademarked name and suspected use of proprietary account information.
Jeremy Schoemaker is well-known on the internet as Shoemoney – a name he has trademarked. Several months ago he noticed that someone was running ads on Google’s AdWords ad service using his trademarked name.
Apparently he contacted Google’s Adwords team to report the violation, but did not get anywhere. He next was able to get a court order that required the person’s webhost to reveal the person’s identity.
He then contacted the person and asked them to stop. They did not.
Now we get to the good part.
Enter Facebook and Google Cached Pages.
Apparently some friends of Shoemoney found the guy on Facebook and noticed that he had several other friends who openly shared that they worked for the Google Adwords team.
Using a cached page search on Google, Shoemoney saw that this person had indeed also listed himself as working for Google Adwords, but had removed the information from his active page.
Well, as any Google employee should know, the internet never forgets.
The really good part is that the trademark violator also revealed that his ad account settings were remarkably similar the settings that Shoemoney had set up.
Generally, this would be unlikely since there are so many variables to control. This likely means that the employee accessed data under Shoemoney’s account that is supposed to be strictly confidential.
So, if you’re thinking about doing something you really don’t want anyone else to know about, then maybe Facebook isn’t for you.
You must log in to post a comment.