Title: Background: My wife works as an administrator at a Canadian cosmetic surgery clinic. The physician, Dr. C., is quite successful and is ranked #1 in our city on sites like RateMD.<p>Yesterday, she was cold-called by an SEO startup in an attempt to sell her a revamped website and SEO services. He said they had already designed a placeholder website, and that he would personalize it for them if the clinic would purchase their services. She politely refused.<p>Out of curiosity, her colleague, J, called the phone number on this fictional web site. J pretended to be a potential client and asked to schedule a consultation. The other party said &quot;The doctor is currently busy; I&#x27;ll check with him and call you back.&quot; J asked which physician she would be seeing. He gave her the name of Dr. C (the physician at J&#x27;s clinic!) along with his background and credentials (gleaned from the bio on Dr. C&#x27;s website). When pressed for the clinic&#x27;s location, they gave J a (fake) address in Chinatown.<p>My wife then called the SEO company to complain that they seemed to be impersonating a legitimate clinic in order to sell SEO services (she did not mention J&#x27;s call). The person she spoke to (listed as one of co-founders) became very rude. He denied that they were doing anything wrong and huffed that &quot;If you don&#x27;t want to grow your Web presence then we don&#x27;t want your business!&quot;<p>I believe that this is an attempted &quot;growth hack&quot; and not an outright scam, but they are taking it too far. Using a real physician&#x27;s identity, even in a placeholder website, can damage his reputation, not to mention displacing him as #1 in Google search results for our city.<p>HN, do you have any thoughts on what action my wife can take to stop this behavior?<p>Update 1: Interestingly, the fake clinic domain name is VERY similar (one letter difference) to another, legitimate clinic in the city.<p>Update 2: Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons is in contact with wife&#x27;s clinic. Preparing to unleash the hounds, no doubt.
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