Olly said at June 8th, 2008 at 10:06pm

Do subscription / non-retail magazines have ISSNs? I was thinking of everyone’s favourite Radio Magazine, but also something like Which?. (I don’t know the answer to this, just pondering).

I would have thought the solution was to turn it the other way around - if people are fraduently using MediaUK to verify fake magazines, then make sure when you display entries you clearly state that “this entry has not been independently verified - information provided by the publisher” or whatever. It is then in their interest to prove that it is a genuine magazine.

You could demand that they only get listed on MediaUK if they provide you with a subscription… although one wonders what the postie would make of so many “specialist interest” magazines arriving at your door.

Olly

Steve Robertson said at June 9th, 2008 at 7:14am

I can hazard a guess that you’d spend a long time trying to verify organisations when the scammers are already a step ahead of the game.

Running a company webcheck is fine for a lot of organisations, but won’t work for organisations such as hospital radio stations. Verifying staff must be bad enough, as most hospital and community radio presenters would not have their own email address with that organisation - I certainly don’t either at Southend Hospital Radio or Phoenix FM.

Michiel van Diesen said at June 9th, 2008 at 8:15am

Although I’m not entirely sure how Ofcom works (I’m Dutch), a smart scammer might just apply for a license (for cable and/or satellite broadcasting) and use that to fool other people into thinking they’re running a legitimate business. I’ve seen it before; the persoI’m talking about applied for a legitimate Chamber of Commerce registration and used that to get an official license to broadcast a radio programme. It was later revoked (he didn’t pay his registration fees) but by then he’d scammed a lot of people…

The same applies for a scammer trying to use a fake magazine to ‘earn’ money. (S)He can just print one magazine, use that to get an ISSN number and then start to ca$h in on it.

Although checking these kind of things can make live harder for scammers, unfortunately people get VERY inventive when trying to make money in a dishonest way.

Paul Easton said at June 9th, 2008 at 11:05am

The problem is that some current scams use genuine magazines that actually ceased publication a while ago - e.g. ‘Popgirl’, which was launched by BBC Worldwide in 2003 but closed a couple of years later.

Until very recently it was still listed on Media UK’s Directory* but was removed as soon as it’s non-existence (and a scam referring to it) was discovered.

For example, someone contacted Media UK with the following query:

“My daughter has been contacted by a gentleman by the name of Dakin Bale a public relations officer from Popgirl Magazine. He is interested in her for a photo shoot for this magazine, and requires that a certain fee be paid for a work permit, in the form of a western union money transfer. Can you please verify this information or direct me to someone who can?”

http://www.modelmayhem.com/po.php?thread_id=214384&page= explains what has been going on.

There have been similar instances using other extinct magazines.

In the case of ‘Popgirl’ the ownership at the time would have easily been verifiable but as the directory relies on people to report ‘dead’ titles it’s not always easy to keep up-to-date.

*Disclosure: I am a Directory Editor (and Admin) with Media UK., for which James Cridland has occasionally bought me beer. The views expressed above are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of James Cridland, Media UK or NotAllBad.

Kevin Coy said at June 9th, 2008 at 6:52pm

Would it not be possible to look into whether any distributors, or large retail outlets have a database of what titles are available to them and their SSBN numbers?

I can think of a few times where I’ve been to my local WHSmiths, ordered a particular magazine and they have looked it up on a database to see if they distribute it.

I’d have thought that any magazine worth its weight in salt would want distribution through such a chain and would therefore be on that database??

Or am I barking up the wrong tree??

Michael Walsh said at June 10th, 2008 at 7:58am

Charge people a fee.

Choose one end of the chain and charge them for access (or if you can manage it charge both ends!) - make the service a premium service from MediaUK.

If it’s the case that you’re being “spoofed” then your reputation is being damaged by proxy. So make a decision - either pull the service completely or turn it into a premium service.

If you make it a premium service then this gives people confidence that if it’s a MediaUK listed company it has been thoroughly vetted. To allow it to be thoroughly vetted then you will need to spend a bit of time and effort to employ someone to chase the official listings of an organisation.

Get one end of the chain to pay for this service - most likely the people seeking to be listed (but is you can charge those seeking access to your vetted listing service you could try that end of the chain). This may not appeal to a lot of people and you may not have a lot of media companies listed - but those listed people can have confidence in.

The question is how much is MediaUK’s reputation worth?