Fake One Star Reviews? (Part 4 of 5 Posts)

For the first post in this series, click here.

One great thing about the KDP forum, we can search for words and find them in old posts. I did a search for Batarang and found one where the user, an author the with the forum name 60shward was letting another writer in the forum know he’d left him a good review. (That review, by the way, seems to have been taken down.)

I’ve captured the screenshot, because our malicious tagger could easily go into his old post and delete that message, something that he hasn’t done as of July 2, 2013 – when I took the above screen shot.

At this point I now understood he was a malicious tagger – because it was 60shward who I apparently offended by my fateful post.

From that point, KDP regulars knew who the poster was – we even knew his real name, which I won’t post at this time, but might in the future if he continues to be a pain in the butt. The forum was in an uproar, considering he’d played nice on the forum with some authors, while leaving nasty tags on their books behind their backs. In a flash he “unpublished his book” and then disappeared.

But he didn’t disappear forever….more tomorrow.

Fake One Star Reviews? (Part 3 of 5 Posts)

For the first post in this blog series, click here.

At the time I asked the question about who added the tag – I didn’t realize there was a way to follow tags and find out who left it. Apparently, the malicious tagger wasn’t aware of this either.

Another writer at the KDP was more savvy than me and my nemesis, and quickly uncovered the culprit. Back then, he was using Batarang Wally for that account, not Loraine.

He’d also been pretty active – leaving malicious and nasty tags on other books by authors who frequented the forum.  One such tag was left on Marti Talbott’s book Marblestone Manson. Marti was a frequent poster at KDP.  He tagged her book: author that misuses adverbs, abortion. I happen to have read that book, and there was not an abortion in it. Marti prides herself in writing clean historical romances. The tag was obviously left with malicious intent – as were other tags, left on other books by authors who frequented the KDP forum.

So how did we figure out the author behind the Batarang Wally user name? I’ll tell you tomorrow.