Keyboard Warriors Lose Anonymity Shield

In the current internet world we live in, everyone blindly believes reviews written by what they perceive as previous customers but how could anyone know if they are true or if they are truly former customers that have left the reviews. It is definitely a system without any checks and balances that is open to abuse both ways. Unscrupulous business owners could skew the reviews in their favour by inundating their page with positive reviews from friends and family or worse by buying reviews in their thousands.

Even more sinister than that is a scenario where competing businesses conspire to damage the reputation of a market leader or prime competitor. One of my contacts had a similar scenario.

This sort of scenario is fairly easy to spot as a previous positive trend of reviews will all of a sudden turn entirely or largely negative in a disproportionate amount and further the likelihood is that the victim will never have heard of the purported reviewer(s).

In scenarios such as this, it is common place for the internet company that provided the opportunity for reviews to ignore the victims complaints. Many reviewers will feel that they are protected by a veil of anonymity and further that there is nothing bad that could happen to them. They probably would think twice if they heard/read the story of the man who was nearly jailed in Thailand for breaching the Thai strict anti-defamation laws by leaving a negative hotel review. Unfortunately, in the UK, the sanctions tend to be civil rather than criminal in nature and of course if you are to take action you would need to know who you were suing before you could even start a claim.

Obtaining the identification details of a negative internet reviewer – case law

Over the course of the last few years, there have been a number of cases in different countries around the world involving negative internet reviews. Earlier this year a prominent case involving an Australian dentist was heard.

Dr Kabbebe, a dental surgeon, pursued Google for an order requiring the company to disclose the identity of a reviewer that confirmed that the experience that the customer had had was ‘extremely awkward and uncomfortable’ and the procedure was a ‘complete waste of time’. Dr Kabbebe apparently asked Google for the offending reviewer’s details but Google refused. In the strict data protection world that we live in, that is perhaps not surprising. Nonetheless, Dr Kabbebe won the argument that he should be entitled to review a document that contained the identification details of the offending reviewer.

Whilst this is an Australian case, the principle of seeking an order requiring an innocent party with details of a wrongdoer to deliver those details up is a long established and reasonably old principle and the leading case of the Courts of England and Wales is Norwich Pharmacal Co v Customs and Excise Commissioners [1974]. The ability to seek disclosure of pertinent documents against a non-party to proceedings has further been enshrined in the Civil Court rules under rule 31.17.

Even though the case involving the Australian dentist is not direct authority in England and Wales, the likelihood is given the Norwich Pharmacal case and rule 31.17 that the Courts in this country would issue a similar order if presented with similar facts.

Whilst obtaining such an order is theoretically possible, the need to obtain an order does add an extra layer of significant cost to an already expensive type of legal case. It is therefore only likely to be a viable option in the most serious of cases, resulting in significant actual or potential financial loss to the victim.