UFX Bank's fake reviews and forum posts

AsstModerator

FPA Forums and Reviews Admin
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UFX Bank's fake reviews and forum posts

Review moderation isn't an exact science. Some fake reviews slip by. Some real reviews seem too suspicious and get deleted. Part of moderating reviews requires some detective work. I lead the FPA's Review Moderation Team and I am very proud of the work we do. Without moderation, the FPA's reviews would quickly turn into a contest about who could submit the most fake reviews the fastest.

Even without fake reviews deliberately promoting or trashing a company, take a quick look at some of the stuff that people submit here....

My Worst Forex Reviews Thread

The FPA doesn't moderate reviews because it's fun. Reviews are moderated to keep the reviews and ratings from becoming useless. It's a job that generates a lot more complaints than thanks, but it needs to be done.


Back in May 2009, I posted a warning on UFX Bank's review page about fake reviews being submitted. Cedrick Toledano of UFX Bank wrote in to express his concerns about this. He said...

Hello,
My name is Cedrick Toledano and i represent UFXBank.
I saw in your site that your people have identified that someone has posed fake reviews about UFX.

I want to make it clear that if someone did do so ... it was not someone from UFXBank ar at least not someone that is currently working in our company.
We suspect it was one of our SEO Affiliates companies that we are working with.

UFXBank request that this comment will be removed if it is possible , also we will be most happy to comment on every future incident like this in the future.

Thanks in advance and hope for a better future cooperation.

One of my moderators asked for information about the company so that all the other reviews for UFX could be rescreened. Cedric replied...

The suspected company is called Fifty – a company from panama ( we found out lately that operate from panama).
Thanks for the cooperation.
My person explained to Cedric that no reviews had been left for his company from Panama. Many of the fake reviews were sent from Israel, including some from the offices of UFX Bank. Cedric replied...

Yes,
Fifty were hired by us to do SEO. In the first few months they have created a auto content generator that blogged sites with keywords that represent forex.
They did all the tests from our software operational center which is located in Israel.
Once we saw that they are conducting these operations are black hat operation we have stopped their contract with us completely.

Thanks

“Black hat” would mean using techniques that are unethical or worse, like posting fake reviews. My moderator replied...

Our reviews have an anti-spam verification code that has to be manually entered. If they cracked that, we would also tend to think that an automated system would have send from that location a larger number of times instead of the 2 we got from inside your company. Either way, this doesn't make sense.

What is Fifty's website?

To which Cedric responded...

They don't have a website as they are black hat .
Look , do what you think is best . I have been faithfull and ingomed you with what I know . I hope you will see in the future that we are a serious and legitimate company .

Thanks

This made even less sense. As far as I could tell, the main thing he was sorry about was getting caught. I finally stepped in and took over the situation and sent this to Cedric...

I'm in charge of the FPA's reviews.

Your new story also makes no sense. At first, you said you fired them when you found out they were blackhat. Now you say they are a little short on contact info because they are blackhat. Do you really expect me to believe that you paid money to an SEO company and let them have access to your servers and only later noticed that they didn't even have a website? That's even less believable than the idea that they went to all the effort to crack the image verification code on my site from your servers and then only posted 2 reviews from that location.

I'm going to be nice. I'm going to remove that warning from your review page. I'm also going to let all the review moderators know to report any reviews for your company that looks even slightly suspicious directly to me. I hope you'll go to great efforts to make sure that there aren't any more reviews that might make me change my mind about removing that warning. The last broker I did a favor for turned around and decided to try some deceptive stunts inside the FPA's forums. A link to this article was sent out to over 40,000 traders...

https://www.forexpeacearmy.com/fore...brokers-fake-publicity-blitz-fpas-forums.html

I hope I won't have to write an article about your brokerage.

That's right. I decided to be a nice guy and give him a break. For several months, it seemed like a good idea. Suspicious reviews for the company dropped to normal levels, with none from the company offices.

Then on November 1st, there were multiple 5 star reviews from the company's Israeli office. When that came to my attention a few days later, I decided to check the forums. There was a forum posting that also came from their office left on October 25th. It was written to appear like it came from a happy customer. A few days later, another freshly created forum account posted another glowing customer testimonial. I traced the IP of that posting, and it came from UFX Bank's offices in the UK.

Is it possible that both these people happened to be visiting the offices of UFX Bank and left reviews from there? Yes, but what are the odds of 2 people visiting 2 different offices both registering for forum membership and writing in the FPA's forums from inside those offices within a 2 week period. None of the forum postings or fake reviews mentioned any visits to company offices. People who visit their broker's offices almost always tell about visits. The excuse of “our happy customers decided to leave reviews or to post in the forums from inside our offices” just doesn't stand up to scrutiny in almost all cases.

I try to be nice. I like to believe companies and individuals can learn from their mistakes. If the other reviews for UFX Bank aren't also fakes, they are very well thought of by most of their customers. If so, they shouldn't have to resort to these sorts of unethical tactics. Instead, they chose to ignore the warnings and tried to cheat in the reviews and inside these forums.

I told Cedric that I hoped I wouldn't have to write an article about his brokerage. The actions taken by at least one UFX Bank employee leave me with no choice.

This isn't quite enough to declare UFX Bank to be a scam. It is enough to warn all traders to use the highest possible level of caution dealing with this company. Don't trust any testimonials you see online that claim to be from their customers. They've already admitted to hiring one black hat company to improve their standing on the web. They continued make fake posts at the FPA after ended their relationship with that company. Personally, I wouldn't do business with a company that pulls stunts like this.

Check these links if you want to see what UFXBank has been up to at the FPA...

UFXBank discussion thread. The fake posts are on page 2.

UFXBank.com Review Page. Some of the fake reviews have been stripped of their ratings and are on display.

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Fake reviews

I for one appreciate immensely for what you guys do, to monitor these reviews. Thanks so much!

nkg0319
 
Thank you for your excellent due diligence. I agree with you, why trade with a broker who is blatantly dishonest with you. I have never had an account with UFX but I have looked at them before. Will cross them off my list now. For the past 4 years I have had accounts with at least a dozen different brokers and have had many bad experiences. If I had known about FPA, those bad experiences would be minimal. Thanks for your help! ! ! !
 
I wonder what sorts of self-contradictory explanations they are working on for this? The first one (blackhat company with no contact info given significant access to company servers) is insane.

If they are stupid enough not to realize that an SEO company with no website isn't legit, I don't want to do business with them.

If they are stupid enough to give any company that level of access to company servers without thoroughly checking out the company first, I don't want to do business with them.

If they lied about there ever being a blackhat SEO company, then they are too unethical for me to want to do business with them.

They definitely seem both colossally stupid and deeply unethical to try to leave fake postings at the FPA after being warned. As far as I'm concerned, any company that stupid and unethical is not a place where any trader should ever put money.


Thank you AsstMod and Review Moderation Team for helping to expose these sorts of stupid broker tricks. Maybe there are some brokers out there who can learn to behave better when they see that this sort of thing won't be overlooked.
 
fake reviews

My hat is off to you, way to go. We need more white hats, not black hats. Keep up the good work. We do appreciate what you do and we should say so more often.... Big Thank You......Richard
 
Great work

Fantastic work guys, I am amazed at the variety and complexity of the good work you do in an industry, which lends itself to people who misrepresent and scam other people.
 
Excellent work sir, your judgement in this affair was clear, focused and very professional.

Where on earth do some of these brokers get their ideas from?

Thank you for your vigilance.
 
Great Work

Great work guys...I hope that the other brokers sit up and pay attention. I am recommending this site to all of my trading friends.:D
 
Excellent work

Thank you sir and the team for continuing effort to keep FPA a clean and balance site. This is our resource to to have proper information, I highly appreciate what you do for us. Thanks again.
 
Dam, I dont envy you your job, but it is kind of amusing. And you do it so well.
I will always try to keep my comments and reviews acurate, and not step on too many toes.
 
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