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Inadequate Seller Labelling

Uhrforum.de: German Agency to Combat Unfair Competition cautions Lukas Zero

Lukas Zero, the operator of the internet site Uhrforum.de has just been confronted with a caution by the German Agency to Combat Unfair Competition. The inadequate seller labelling on his website is the cause of complaint.

Under current laws this is not a minor offence. The legislator intends to impose penalties of up to 50,000 euros for these misdeeds. The reason why the Italian-born Lukas Zero does not provide important data such as a fixed network phone number, or, for example, his tax number in the imprint section of his web site, can only result in further speculation.

It is also noteworthy that in the imprint section of his website, his given address is a "business centre". In this "business centre" one can feign a "company headquarters" for a few euros at Berlin's top address in the "Friedrichstrasse". The company offering this location sums up the situation with a succinct advertising statement: "This address on your headed paper will accomplish miracles for your company image.“ So it's no miracle that such addresses are often used by slippery and dubious businessmen for their machinations.

So it's possible that, in reality, Lukas Zero does indeed reside somewhere else. A simple search through the http://libyen.com/ domain's registration data provides a completely different address for "Lukas Zero" from Berlin. A search on Google Earth provides yet another, slightly less elegant view of this "doppelganger". Keeping it foolish, this "doppelganger" announces in bad Italo-German that: "This project was developed by Zero Web Development“ in the imprint section on Lybien.com. If one clicks on the link, one arrives at …: Lukas Zero in the Friedrichstrasse. One can only speculate on the sense and the purpose of Zero Web Development. No information regarding a legal company form, no tax number, none of the usual company information regarding fixed network phone and fax numbers, and no accessible data in the Federal Gazette. None of this serves to strengthen ones' trust. The reason why Friedrichstrasse in Berlin was chosen as "company headquarters" seems to fit into the picture nicely.

General Warning

Users of forums and chat sites should be very careful when transmitting and posting personal and private data. Such forums have been used in the past to collect user information and data without consent, for commercial use, or to spy out the user. Ostensible online friends with common interests pose direct questions to guileless victims in an attempt to collect information. Criminal gangs then use this data for fraud or, for example, in the preparation of burglaries.