Fake Wikipedia Page -- Domains by Proxy

[Dawn Lawson]

Jurisdiction

Arizona

Hi. I have a friend who has a fake Wikipedia page on him that seriously slanders him. False almost EVERYTHING. Legal charges, etc. I tried to file a complaint with GoDaddy -- they threw a bunch of double talk at me and gave me a sales pitch.

Harry Hill(activist) (dummy.finance)

File:Harry Hill signature.png - Wikipedia

https://www.zoominfo.com/p/Harry-Hill/2080364047

I tried the "View source" thing and could not find anything to identify these people.

This cannot be legal.

Can you give me any suggestions on what to do about it?

Many thanks,

Dawn Lawson

Email information REDACTED by one of the ever observant, protective "mods"...

 

[army judge]

Can you give me any suggestions on what to do about it?

There is nothing you can do about something that fails to hurt, harm, slander, or defame you.

The affected party might wish to discuss the matter with an attorney.

The infamous Mr. X might not be able to do anything about a parody account, either.

 

[flyingron]

I have no idea what you are talking about. Your link is malformed. If it's really wikipedia, you can just edit the bogus content away. If it comes back, there's a process for that: Wikipedia:Dispute resolution - Wikipedia

 

[PayrollHRGuy]

I have no idea what you are talking about. Your link is malformed. If it's really wikipedia, you can just edit the bogus content away. If it comes back, there's a process for that: Wikipedia:Dispute resolution - Wikipedia

It's a 'wiki' but not served on Wikipedia.com.

 

[zddoodah]

Interesting that, when I hover my mouse over the link in your post, it is not a Wikipedia link, and it's a link for someone named "Harry Hill," not "Barry Chill." When I searched on Wikipedia for "Barry Chill," I got no results, and none of the results for "Harry Hill" seem relevant. So what exactly are you pulling here?

I tried to file a complaint with GoDaddy

What does "tried to file" mean? Did you mean that you actually did file a complaint? Why would you do this? What business is it of yours? And why would you file a complaint with a company that acts as a domain registrar and website host? What would that company have to do with a supposed Wikipedia article?

Can you give me any suggestions on what to do about it?

Yeah...let your friend handle his own business. This isn't any of your concern.

 

[Tax Counsel]

Can you give me any suggestions on what to do about it?

There isn't anything, at least in terms of any legal action, that YOU can do about it because it's not your problem; the alleged defamation concerns your friend, not you. So it is your friend who needs to take action. I suggest you tell your friend he ought to see a local attorney who litigates defamation cases for advice.

A short note on the legal terms, since many in the general public seem to get them confused. Defamation is a legal action against another for communicating false negative facts about you to others. The damage is to your reputation and what you might get from a defamation claim depends a lot on whether the defamed person is a public figure (elected official, celebrity, etc), the applicable state law and exactly what actual harm, if any, is suffered by by the defamation. Slander is spoken defamation and libel is written defamation. Thus, if the defamation consists of things written on internet sites, that would be libel, not slander.

Note that litigating this can backfire and result in a lot more people hearing the defamatory comments than if the defamed person just ignores it. So often when there are no actual damages and no significant impact occurs because of the defamation (other than being insulted by the defamatory material) it is best to just to ignore it and move on. The defamed person could easily spend more in litigating this than he/she ever gets in a judgment, especially when there are no actual damaged. Most Internet pages tend to fade to obscurity fairly quickly. So it may not garner much attention anyway. If, however, the defamation has caused serious financial loss or other harm, it may be necessary for the defamed person to sue to get compensation for the harm done.

What does your friend think of it? Has he been harmed financially at all by the defamation? It's ultimately up to him to decide whether to roll the dice and sue for this. If he wants to go that route, he'll need an attorney.