Anonymous A.

SimpliSafe is a malicious security service company that promotes a 24/7 surveillance culture, similar to China's malevolent and evil facial surveillance system. Imagine a world where you can't go anywhere without being analyzed by AI that monitors you thousands of times per second and reports your activities. SimpliSafe contributes to the ever-growing surveillance culture of the world and erodes fundamental human privacy rights.

Source:
https://www.digitaltrends.com/home/simplisafe-outdoor-cameras-ai-protection/

Similar to CNET's scandal over their undisclosed use of AI-generated articles without disclosure, "Strawpoll.com" appears to be using AI-generated articles.

Exhibit 1 (Captured April 2024):
https://strawpoll.com/most-reliable-atv-all-time

Strawpoll staff's fraudulent use of AI to create fake articles under real names has been reported to Google, Bing, and Yahoo for search engine de-listing/de-optimization.

Given the use of fake, non-real, AI-generated articles, this site is NOT recommended, and should be reported to the appropriate website search authorities (Google, Bing, Yahoo) so it can be permanently de-emphasized from search results.

Popular literature publisher. However, Wiley is a low-grade, low-quality source of multiple medical journals. Though many of their journals claim to be "peer-reviewed," they openly allow studies to be published for products that have been sponsored by the very manufacturers of the product being studied. According to Yale, "Studies sponsored by industry were 3.6 times more likely to have conclusions favorable to industry than studies without that support."[1]

Wiley contributes to the scientific industry's dangerous "Replication Crisis," a human-harmful result of studies performed in unprofessional manners [2], such as by hosting papers written by corrupt authors sponsored to give good results by manufacturers. The Replication Crisis has resulted in nearly 40% of scientific studies being non-reproducible a second time. You can see one example of Wiley publishing a corrupt study sponsored by the manufacturer here: [3]

Based on the evidence, Wiley is not a quality source of scientific publishing data, and its published studies should be scrutinized for the elements of unprofessionalism, such as corrupt funding, present in its content, that make it clear that actual scientific results are not strived for. 2 out of 5.

[1]https://medicine.yale.edu/news/yale-medicine-magazine/article/does-industry-funding-equal-conflict-of-interest-often/
[2]https://www.google.com/search?q=percent+studies+cannot+be+reproduced
[3]https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jocd.*******

I have had one main account I've been successfully using on Venmo for years. But I desired a second account to receive money from an online friend. Before creating this second account, I specifically looked up Venmo's policy regarding multiple accounts, and discovered that Venmo indeed allows for a second account. Excellent. But upon creating it, I was then immediately sent this hostile email regarding "recent activity that appears to be a violation of our User Agreement", before sending or receiving a single payment. The email contained zero information on any policy and no information on how to contact anyone. So I called Venmo customer service.

First time I called spend 5 minutes entering all the information they asked, just to be hung up on.

The second time I finally reached a customer service representative. The most incredible part is, the woman ("Julie M") I spoke to at Venmo customer service on 1/28/24 didn't know their own policy. If this company's representatives don't know their own policies, how on Earth are we supposed to? Are we supposed to read their minds?

The cherry on top is that the customer service agent said she wasn't in contact with the team responsible for the suspension. Why does their customer service line even exist then? All I wanted to do was receive money as a normal user. I've replied to the email, but based on my current experience, I don't have high hopes.

I seem to be far from alone in experiencing Venmo's shocking anti-user policies. Venmo requested a woman to upload her driver's license for "verification", only to permanently ban her for life. It was only when a real-life news station intervened that she was able to be unbanned:
https://www.wmar2news.com/matterformallory/woman-kicked-off-venmo-warns-other-users-about-keeping-a-balance

Further horror stories on Reddit cement the fact that Venmo appears to have now developed into an anti-user payment platform that threatens its users and should not be trusted with your funds.

A video game website where users can upload custom-made mods. Unfortunately, site staff act in corrupt and depraved ways, including but not limited to removing comments that criticize them and even removing comments from the site that simply criticize their individual mods. "mimo4e/mecchi" is one of these individuals. Oddly enough, the same individuals that censor users on their site and remove critiquing comments on their mod pages then proceed to host Patreons, where they ask users for money in exchange for their mods and complain about not receiving enough money (see attached image, warning: inappropriate language).

A highly corrupt website with arbitrary enforcement of rules. If you must access to do anything besides download a mod, ensure you are connected to a VPN and do not provide any personal details.

1/5.

In an age where 1.4 billion people are spied on by a malicious, dystopian government (China) that exploits technology to engage in facial surveillance, tracking, internet blocking, and cell phone hacking, "Volarious", headed by "Weiliang Zhang" and "Joshua Chao," engages in blatant dystopian hardware solutions that threaten the freedom of citizens and civilians. This is not conjecture. They intentionally market their products as being "DESIGNED FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT". Though they are based out of Singapore, Singapore has established governmental connections and a history of hardware sharing with the Chinese government.

1 out of 5. The behavior of Weiliang Zhang and Joshua Chao should be made illegal, and their actions should be criminalized.

Untrustworthy Platform. Discord staff, lead by Jason Citron, Ben Shanken, and Franceso Polizzi [1], engage in unsolicited spying of your personal messages without your approval or consent. Furthermore, after personally reviewing images privately sent between two individuals on their platform, they may choose to permanently ban your Discord account without warning or notification.

Fraudulently uses AI-generated article images without disclosure. See "NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50 'Blackwell' GPUs ready to launch in Q4 2024" by Anthony Garreffa on Dec 21,2023 1:09 AM CST.

Use of fully artificial, AI-generated imagery without disclosure represents egregious fraudulent behavior and deception. For this reason, this site cannot be trusted. 1 out of 5.

Extreme censorship throughout the site. The views shared on the site ostensibly by the whole viewing community, are actually heavily censored in favor of the site staff and janitor (moderator)'s opinions. Opinions that do not fit through the keyhole of both these heavily biased persons, and vague, arbitrarily-enforced per-community rules, are removed, and users may even be permanently banned for sharing their opinions. A VPN and using non-identifiable personal data during signup is strongly recommended for posting to this untrustworthy site.

Website appears to report health and science-based news. However, it appears at least somewhat unprofessional, with at least one instance of author bias in the form of amateur and unnecessary commentary in articles that do not have an "Opinion" label. Due to this lack of journalistic integrity, it is recommended you corroborate what is said here with at least one other reputable news source.

A legitimate university. However, at least one of its staff have been shown to collaborate on corrupt scientific studies that involve severe conflicts of interest that skew results.

One example of this is a study collaborated on by Northumbria University called "The use of a systems approach to increase NAD+ in human participants" [1]. This study paints a rosy picture of a Nuchido-brand supplement in improving your health. However, this study was partially funded by the very company responsible for producing the supplement, Nuchido.

According to Yale, "Studies sponsored by industry were 3.6 times more likely to have conclusions favorable to industry than studies without that support." [2]

Northumbia University contributes to the scientific industry's "Replication Crisis," a dangerous and human-harmful result of studies performed in unprofessional manners [3], such as by hosting papers written by corrupt authors sponsored to give good results by manufacturers.

While Northumbria University may be a recognized university, it conducts unethical scientific practices and it should be penalized or banned from contributing scientific research to the global scientific community. For the reasons above, do not trust any scientific study associated in any way with "Northumbria University", without doing further research.

[1] Links are not allowed to be posted in some reviews. For direct source, Google "The use of a systems approach to increase NAD + in human participants (September 19,2023)"
[2] Links are not allowed to be posted in some reviews. For direct source, Google "Does industry funding equal conflict of interest? Often it does, Yale authors claim"
[3] Links are not allowed to be posted in some reviews. Google "percent studies cannot be reproduced"

This website appears to fraudulently utilize AI-generated article images for things that do not exist, passing them off as actual images. This undisclosed and fraudulent use of AI is an outrageous violation of journalistic integrity. Example Here:
[SiteJabber fails to allow links. Google "Toms Hardware Nvidia Sold 900 Tons of H100 GPUs Last Quarter, Says Analyst Firm" and view the article image]

The website score is 2/5 for potentially illegal journalistic fraud.

Site creator publicly admits to using fraudulent, AI-generated content without disclosure, attempting to pass off generated writings as her own handwritten content.

1 out of 5 stars.

Unethical Twitch site staff, headed by "Dan Clancy", plan to allow streamers to permanently block Twitch users from watching videos and streams of which the streamer has blocked the user. This unethical treatment of site visitors, headed by Twitch staff member "Trevor Fisher," represents an unprecedented condoned targeting and censoring of individuals. For this reason, it is recommended to use a VPN to access Twitch and create accounts with as little associated information with them as possible. Do not trust them with your IP address.

1/5

While it appears ostensibly to be a simple, easy-to-understand, objective source of ingredient explanations for a variety of cosmetic and beauty products, site writers appear to (intentionally or unintentionally) strongly exaggerate the qualities of certain ingredients in explanations to degrees that highly mislead readers. For example, "Incidecoder" staff write that retinol is a "the most proven anti-aging superstar available over the counter", "works great", and even refer to it as "magic" (archive source: https://tinyurl.com/4vdrtach). However, professional ConsumerReports testing on real people in the real world [1,2] revealed that a study of nine different "anti-aging" serums with similar "magic" ingredients produced results that were "underwhelming", and that the very best outcome possible was that they only "slightly reduce[d] the appearance of wrinkles in some people". Would a trustworthy ingredient analysis site refer to these kinds of results as "magic"?

Similar ingredients on the site (sometimes referred to as "Superstar" or "Goodie") appear to also be over-emphasized and exaggerated with no sources of clear, real-world results, which mislead readers through exotic-sounding, sublime verbiage (e.g. "magic moisturizer", "great choice for anti-aging", "can help the skin to repair itself") into expecting drastically different results than such products with those ingredients are actually capable of offering. Finally, even for ingredients described that do have a well-documented positive effect, the site is still highly misleading as it does not always list the percent/strength/skin-longevity required for that ingredient to have an effect. A user may be duped by the site into purchasing a product with an ingredient due to the site's glowing description of that ingredient, only for that purchased product to have a negligible amount that has little to no effect. This is called "angel dusting" and is a well-documented occurrence [3]. Incidecoder sometimes correctly accounts for this by stating percent/strength/skin-longevity requirements in the ingredient description, but many times it does not. As a result, it is likely that most people that use the site will be wrongfully influenced by Incidecoder's over-the-top descriptions to purchase products that, in actuality, do not have anywhere near the concentrations required to achieve the results listed in site ingredient descriptions.

For these reasons, Insidecoder should NOT be trusted as a sole source for accurate and reliable explanations of cosmetic/beauty ingredients. Though it's easy to buy into self-described "science-based" sites that paradoxically throw the term "magic" around, as seen in this case, you should research the real-world efficacy of an ingredient and its required concentration from professional sources. Remember that actual results are clearly shown by evidence-based, independent, published scientific testing. Your money, time, and long-term well-being will thank you.

Sources:
1. ConsumerReports.org Video - "Testing Anti-Aging Serums" (SiteJabber fails to display the page URL properly)
2. https://www.consumerreports.org/media-room/press-releases/2010/04/cr-health-anti-wrinkle-serums-claim-miracles-but-fall-short-on-results/
3. https://health.howstuffworks.com/skin-care/beauty/skin-and-makeup/angel-dusting.htm#pt1

Website is run by fraudulent individuals who advertise the means to "[bypass] even the strongest and most accurate AI detectors"

Actively engage in the use of AI for unethical and immoral facial and body recognition and classification, which has the deeply potent capacity for intense misuse by individuals, private entities, and governments. An example of this is the company's "BionicMind" software.

1/5.

Technically safe to purchase from, but engages in fraudulent marketing: in their "Before and After" shots, their After images have not only the product advertised, but other unmentioned make-up product(s) included, leading to an "After" photo that is not possible when only using the product advertised.

Urban Decay, part of "L'oreal", has been reported to the United States FTC for illegal marketing practices.

Advocates for using fraudulent, AI-generated content for public use.

1/5. Do not do business with.

Dovepress is a low-grade, low-quality source of multiple medical journals. Though they claim to be "peer-reviewed," they openly allow studies to be published for products that have been sponsored by the manufacturers of those products. According to Yale, "Studies sponsored by industry were 3.6 times more likely to have conclusions favorable to industry than studies without that support." [2]

Dovepress contributes to the scientific industry's "Replication Crisis," a dangerous and human-harmful result of studies performed in unprofessional manners [1], such as by hosting papers written by corrupt authors sponsored to give good results by manufacturers. You can see one example of Dovepress publishing a corrupt study sponsored by the manufacturer here:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC*******/

Based on the evidence, Dovepress is not a quality source of scientific data, and its publishings should be scrutinized for the elements of unprofessionalism, such as corrupt funding, present in its content, that make it clear that actual scientific results are not strived for. 2 out of 5.

[1]https://www.google.com/search?q=percent+studies+cannot+be+reproduced
[2]https://medicine.yale.edu/news/yale-medicine-magazine/article/does-industry-funding-equal-conflict-of-interest-often/