Counterfeiting crowdfunding campaigns @indiegogo (updated)
I am a backer of Dave Jones (EEVblog) on Kickstarter for a 121GW multimeter. It did well, 2,296 backers pledged AU$ 644,674. It’s a “A fully custom EEVblog Electronics Multimeter designed by Dave & UEI, with many exclusive features like SD card logging & Bluetooth! Dave is shipping some of the units now; mine is estimated to ship in March. Dave did a good job with the campaign, the backer updates and the complexities of a crowdfunded hardware project.
And then I saw it on Indiegogo, thought that was weird, but didn’t look more than a glance.
Dave posted this video today. It appears someone made a fake Indiegogo http://ift.tt/2AN1dRS and according to the EEVblog forums, received backers. Looks like at least 6 backers, at $170 each.
It was immediately reported to Indiegogo and it’s now listed as “under review by the Trust & Safety team.” And was removed, and/or being reviewed. Fast, good work Indiegogo –
“(Indiegogo Support)
Jan 9, 10:26 PSTHi there,
Thank you for bringing this to our attention! We have removed the campaign from our platform and will not allow the user to use Indiegogo in the future. Indiegogo is an open platform so we regularly review campaigns during their duration to look for suspicious activity.
This campaign showed up in our review queue today and our Trust & Safety team was just about to review it when you wrote in. Thank you for assisting with this process! I apologize for any inconvenience this might have caused you.
To learn more about Indiegogo’s Trust & Safety effort, please visit: http://ift.tt/2CWsFCv. Thank you again for taking the time to get in touch with us and for helping to keep Indiegogo a safe and secure platform.
—
Trust and Safety”
Dave was on vacation and this likely added stress which probably not expected when you’re on vacation. It’s unclear to me the amount of verification Indiegogo does when it says “verified” – for the fake Indiegogo, and it indicated email verified. So what does this mean for copyright and trademark holders, for makers who have a Kickstarter and may not know about these fake attempts on Indiegogo? The Indiegogo campaign was a straight-up attempt to trick people, and it worked for awhile.
It would be good for hardware makers (and hardware backers) to know how the verifications work or can work, to avoid this. On another note – There is an Indiegogo that seems to be stalled and reported by many of its backers “SFANS: Makes Your Nintendo Switch Truly Portable – USD 130,064 total funds raised 921% funded on August 6, 2017.” There are no new updates as of October of 2017.
