What's worse, the spam was disguised as product reviews.
Here is the first post I ran across:
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Link: http://www.amazonsellercommunity.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=181892&tstart=0
So, that's his post. Notice that it was posted the same day the account was registered, and for some reason he was answering a thread from February 2010... in April 2011.
That screams self-promoting spammer to me.
Here is another post:
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Here's the user profile at Amazon:
| User Profile for: okudzhava | |||||||||||||||||
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| UserID: | 69595 | ||||||||||||||||
| Username: | okudzhava | ||||||||||||||||
| Name: | Bez Appel | ||||||||||||||||
| Email: | |||||||||||||||||
| Registered: | 4/28/11 | ||||||||||||||||
| Total Posts: | 4 | ||||||||||||||||
| Recent Messages: |
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Here's a link to the user profile:
http://www.amazonsellercommunity.com/forums/profile.jspa?userID=69595
Look carefully at the dates and times.
Posts at 5:30 PM, 5:36 PM, 5:38 PM and 5:41 PM, all on the same day.
It seems like a non-spamming poster would not plug someone else's product 4 times in 11 minutes, never having posted on the forum before.
Notice that the poster chose to have Amazon display their name as bez appel.
A quick Google of that name shows posts on the Amazon Web Services developer forums from late March 2011.
Note the post, and the platform this poster mentions he's developing for:
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Link for this forum post:
https://forums.aws.amazon.com/message.jspa?messageID=232784#232784
So, we've got posts from March 27, where the guy is developing an app that runs on Android 1.6 and uses Amazon's Advertister API.
We've then got posts from a month later, where a guy with the exact same name is extolling the virtues of an application that use Amazon's Advertiser API to check marketplace prices for products. I wonder what platform the app happens to require?
Let's check the product page:
ABOUT THIS APP
That's right, folks, Android 1.6 and up.
Here's the link at Android Market for the app:
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.BookBandit&feature=search_result
Here's part of the item's page there:
Description
Scan any book with an ISBN barcode to find out how much money you can make if you sell it on Amazon.
* Choose if you'll be selling with FBA or shipping yourself. Book Bandit uses up-to-date calculations for USPS Media Mail rates or specify a UPS per pound rate if you're an FBA seller.
PLEASE CONTACT THE DEVELOPER if you encounter any problems. We are committed to providing a bug-free experience to our users. All bug reports will be resolved and a free update will be made available to our users.
This is the best-value Amazon scout app on the Market today.
NEW FEATURE: Numpad style input for ISBN and book cost. Save time entering those numbers by hand
"Force Close" errors have been fixed!
Super easy to use. You must install a barcode scanner for this app to function (ZXing and QR Droid are both free scanner apps)
Make the money back that you spent on this app after only one use!
If you're an FBA seller Book Bandit calculates all the FBA fees for you and even lets you input your UPS shipping rate to give you an extremely precise profit figure. And you don't have to do a single calculation!
Even if you're not an FBA Book Bandit uses USPS Media Mail rates and Amazon Marketplace fees to calculate an extremely accurate profit figure without any calculation necessary on your part.
Potential uses:
1) Find valuable books in your collection
2) Pick out the most valuable books at a garage sale or thrift store
3) Booksellers can instantly assess the resale value of a book
2) Pick out the most valuable books at a garage sale or thrift store
3) Booksellers can instantly assess the resale value of a book
* Get full details for all merchants selling the book, including full price (and shipping cost), book condition and any condition notes
* Displays weight and Amazon Sales Rank
* When you're ready to list the book for sale, a single tap takes you to the Amazon selling page for that book.
* Or add the book to your "Shipment", then save the list of books in your Shipment to a CSV text file that you can use when you create your FBA (Fulfillment By Amazon) shipment.
* Choose if you'll be selling with FBA or shipping yourself. Book Bandit uses up-to-date calculations for USPS Media Mail rates or specify a UPS per pound rate if you're an FBA seller.
* Ability to specify that you're a Pro Merchant
PLEASE CONTACT THE DEVELOPER if you encounter any problems. We are committed to providing a bug-free experience to our users. All bug reports will be resolved and a free update will be made available to our users.
* Requires a separate barcode scanner installed (We recommend the free and open-source ZXing)
Visit Developer's Website›
App Screenshots
User Reviews
revising my review below
– April 29, 2011
Didn't work on Samsung Fascinate. Would be interested if it ever got fixed
– April 12, 2011
This is interesting and certainly gives you some good information on the value of ...
– April 8, 2011
My comments to the developer:
I'm sure many booksellers really would have thought that this was a worthwhile app, but no one likes a spammer.
What's worse than spamming, which is real evil anyway, is being a liar by pretending to be a satisfied customer.
Lying tells me you are untrustworthy. You can't do business with a liar.
Even though the app is under $2, by installing your app on their phone, a customer would have to trust you to not be doing other evil things to their phone while you're checking marketplace values and Amazon fees for them.
On top of that, you're just not clever; you could have used a fake name for the Amazon seller forum post, and another fake name for the Amazon developer forum posts.
Thus, you win this blog's first:
Bad developer, bad! No Cookie!
Here's a picture of the cookie you're not getting:
