Revenge of the cyberspoofers
(Filed: 22/08/2004)

Don't get mad, get even. That's what angry customers are doing by setting up websites attacking companies and their policies. Robert Watts reports

It's not often the City gets excited about a cattle farmer from Worcestershire. But Craig Walsh's creation of a website lampooning the Queen's bank has turned him into something of folk hero in the Square Mile.

In between managing his pedigree Highland cattle, Walsh has created coutts sucks.com, which recounts his side of a sorry tale in which Coutts, owned by Royal Bank of Scotland, over-charged him by nearly £18,000 and then closed his 18-year-old account with just one month's notice.

"I was mad at them, but I knew if I wrote to them I would get a very courteous, corporate reply - this has been, well, cathartic," says Welsh, whose only other experience of internet design was creating a website for the Guernsey Cattle Association.

"Building the site was pretty simple, and it's just £9 for a domain name and £10 for a year's hosting. My only regret is that I couldn't see the look on the face of Coutts' bankers when they saw the site - those people are so patrician."

While underworked City types have been happily forwarding the site's address to colleagues and chums, the august bank, formally famous for its frock-coated clerks, hasn't quite seen the joke.

Coutts doesn't regard the content of the site as libellous, but - even so - it fired off a letter to the internet service provider that hosts Walsh's site; and soon after the site was closed.

However, the farmer isn't one to give up, and 48 hours later the site was up and running again courtesy of another ISP.

When we spoke to Coutts the bank seemed to have given up. "We acknowledge the information on this site is not currently defamatory," a Coutts spokesman said. "On this basis, we do not feel that the site is a major risk to our reputation. We will not take the matter further."

However, Coutts is one of countless corporate victims of "cybersmearers", or those who create websites that spoof corporate ones, usually as a manifestation of consumer complaints.

Meanwhile, the firms in the firing line are trying to fight back. They use lawyers and even private investigators to help close down the e-pranksters. But they are starting to realise that the law is not usually on their side.

Just about any large firm you care to mention has been hit. British Telecom had to suffer the indignity of btsuck.org, which features a vicious attack on BT's internet services.

NThellworld.co.uk is devoted to incinerating the telecoms company's reputation, while starbuckscoffee.co.uk invites visitors to edit the logo of the coffee shop chain with a green marker pen to produce a rather crude imperative.

Then there's: mitsubishisucks.com, microsuck.com, and chasebanksucks.com.

"Our raison d'etre is to poke fun and stir things up a bit," says the creator of www. Satansbusy.co.uk, a spoof of the beleaguered supermarket chain's website. The site is a convincing imitation of Sainsbury's official one, although the picture of the celebrity chef Jamie Oliver is captioned "irritatingly smug and crass adverts".

Another bon mot is "Strawberries. We put them in punnets, with the nice ones on top and the rotten ones below." And then there is this: "Organics. Want less do you? OK, we'll charge you more for it. Come on you mugs, you can afford it!"

The site's manager, who will only say that his name is "Stan", claims he's even sold some of his pricey "Satansbusy. Making your life hell" T-shirts to people at Sainsbury's head office for £14.99 a pop.

One member of the supermarket's staff did not see the funny side and used his work e-mail account to send "Stan" a note promising to "rip out your f**king teeth when I find your address through your ISP number".

The company's official spokesman said: "We do employ people to monitor such sites. With this one we felt taking down the site would only do more harm than good."

But would Sainsbury have been able to close the site, even if it had wanted to? The law that should protect corporates from such abuse is so-called "passing off", where an entity imitates another in a bid to feed off its good name and reputation.

However, for someone to be convicted of passing off there must be some evidence that the consumer has been "confused" into thinking the spoof site is the genuine article.

"Because the English all have a sophisticated and slightly cynical sense of humour, they are not confused by these sites. When you see a parody website you know full well that it is one," says Chris Forsyth, an intellectual property partner at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, the leading law firm.

"But we do tell our clients to keep a watch out for these sites because generally your rights are prejudiced if you tolerate them."

Companies may be able to take action on the basis of the law covering trademark or copyright infringement, and also possibly for defamation.

"The trouble is these sites are carefully constructed not to cross the line," says Sarah Hudson, an associate in the intellectual property department at Eversheds. However, she believes starbuckscoffee .co.uk wouldn't last five minutes if the coffee giant took action.

But even if the firm does produce a strong enough case, who does it post the writ to? Few of the websites name their creators. So targeted companies are hiring private detectives to find the cybersmearers.

Spencer Burgess, a director at Carratu International, a leading corporate investigator, says: "We get asked to monitor the net and also to track down the people who put these sites together.

"Some of this does involve sophisticated IT, but it also involves undercover work. The trouble is the people we're looking for know this and are becoming increasingly sophisticated."

Consequently, law firms are increasingly advising their clients to target the internet service provider that hosts the website.

Reputable American and European ISPs will normally withdraw the sites after a strongly worded letter, but this is not always the case with ISPs in the Far East or less developed countries. Anyway, the website creators can always follow Walsh's tactic and move their site to another ISP.

NTL, the telecoms group, adopted a more imaginative way of fighting back. When the company's attention was drawn to NThellworld.com, a forum for its fuming customers, it simply bought the site from its owners.

However, it may have been cash down the drain. Worried that their views would be sanitised, the founders simply resurrected their site at ntlhellworld.co.uk.

Perhaps prevention is a more sensible step. For instance, Marks and Spencer owns the domain names for marksandspencersucks.com and ebay holds the rights to ebaysucks.com.

Meanwhile, Royal Bank of Scotland has bought the derogatory web address versions of its brand and of the moniker for its NatWest arm. But its Coutts subsidiary was slow off the mark. A cattle farmer from Worcester got there first.