YouGov defrauded in BNP poll sting

YouGov - being conned by the BNP

We've all known for ages that the BNP's legions of keyboard warriors are encouraged to vote in online polls where the result, if tilted, is advantageous to the party, but the BNP now appears to have taken this con trick one step further and is supporting a call on its own website to defraud money from YouGov and pay it into the party's coffers.

British Patriot, an administrator on the BNP's own social network, has called on members to join YouGov so that they can be on the list of people to be called when there is a poll to be carried out. As members, these people are given 50p per survey which is paid to them when the amount owed reaches £50. British Patriot suggests;

'Despite recently getting two MEPs elected our support in Yougov polls has recently dropped to 3% (just 1% in Scotland). One of the main reasons people don’t vote for us is because they believe we are a wasted vote, and it’s online polls such as Yougov that give them this impression! If EVERY BNP supporter joined Yougov, we could put our support on a par with the Lib Dems and possibly higher!

On top of this we could actually raise money for the Party via Yougov as you actually get paid for participating in surveys. I have already been sent a £50 cheque by Yougov which I donated to the party. Imagine if every BNP supporter signed up to Yougov and every few weeks, raised £50 which was donated to the party. The party could potentially get £100,000’s per year via Yougov!!!'

British Patriot compounds this suggested fraud by extending it;

'Also if you join Yougov via the referral link below Yougov will send me the equivalent amount in survey credit for each survey they complete during their first three months of membership. Therefore potentially DOUBLING the money raised for the party! You can also send your referral link to your friends and family, and therefore increasing the amount you raise for the party. I’m very close to receiving my second cheque which I would really like to donate towards the legal battle against the treacherous extremist-lefties of the CEHR.'

Regular readers might recall a similar fraud carried out by the BNP on Usborne Books back in April of last year, where the party sold the publishers books illegally via its own tat-flogging Excalibur arm, earning commission on sales despite the breaching of a number of rules. Thanks to swift action by our readers and Usborne, this was stopped in a day or two and the BNP were deprived of any further money from that particular con trick.

With regard to YouGov, the implications are rather more sinister. Apart from the fact that BNP members are being encouraged to obtain money by false pretenses which will then be donated to the party, the party is also deliberately loading the YouGov member base with numerous BNP members, thus skewing any survey or poll result in, where relevant, the BNP's favour. This latter point ties in nicely with a section of YouGov's terms and condition for what they term 'panel members'.

'3.6.6. In the course of using the YouGov WebPages and / or participating in YouGov Activities or YouGov Panels, you agree not to:

h. attempt to submit more than one vote per survey or do any other act that may affect the validity of any result obtained through any YouGov Activity or YouGov Panel.'

Clearly, British Patriot has breached this condition. So who is British Patriot? I've no idea, though I suspect it's that well-known liar and Nick Griffin ghost-writer Paul Golding. But YouGov can find out very easily because whoever it is has helpfully provided us with his referral ID number, which is

5e61b7ea-317c-4005-94d0-fcdd2f2d8b0d

I'm assuming this is all that's needed to identify this fraudster to YouGov but just in case it isn't, here's the full referrer link;

http://my.yougov.com/go.aspx?id=5e61b7ea-317c-4005-94d0-fcdd2f2d8b0d

There's no way of knowing from this end precisely how many people the BNP has fed into this fraud but a quick look at the post on the BNP's social networking set-up (a replacement for its disastrously-managed forum) reveals that around 25 members have joined up to YouGov from that post alone plus an unknown number who have been sent the referral link via those who've joined, their friends and families.

Nor, we discover, is this a new fraud the BNP has set up to raise money. One post from a Stephen Palmer says

'I had already joined YouGov after reading the thread about it on the old BNP forum.'

so it looks like this con has been going on for some time - which makes me wonder about ALL the poll results that place the BNP rather higher than one would expect.

Whether all this is illegal is debatable and I'm no lawyer but it's certainly unethical, definitely skews YouGov's polls which are generally highly-regarded for their accuracy and clearly puts even more money into the Welshpool pig-farmer's already well-stuffed pockets. And we would like to see it stopped.

We'd like you to ring, write to, fax or email YouGov to tell them of this fraud and to let them know who it is being perpetrated by, by referring to the ID number quoted above. If YouGov has any sense, it will close down this fraudster's account and its referrals and demand its money back from the BNP. If not, we can safely assume that it is happy to be funding the racist BNP.

You can contact YouGov in the following ways;

YouGov
50 Featherstone Street,
London, EC1Y 8RT

Tel: +44 (0)20 7012 6000
Fax: +44 (0)20 7012 6001
Email: info@yougov.com

Stay polite (difficult when referring to the BNP, I know) and let us know any results via the comments section. Go for it...

Thanks to NG (no, not that one) for the heads-up.