Angry in the Great White North

Sarah Tobol of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle wonders about the Colgate website listed on the counterfeit toothpaste boxes:

This reporter also visited the web site printed on the box of the counterfeit toothpaste (www.colgate.co.za) and compared it to Colgate-Palmolive’s actual web site (www.colgate.com). It looked like it was made professionally and could have been the company web site at first glance. However, when compared with the actual web site, there are several drastic differences.

Both web sites have a list of products on them, but the list for the actual web site is noticeably more extensive than the fake web site, and all but one of the products on the imitation web site do not match up with the real one. The only item that has the same name on both sites is the Colgate Simply White. However, the item on the Colgate-Palmolive web site is a toothpaste, while the one on the “Colgate” web site is a whitening gel.

Additionally, when the word “Colgate” appears on the real web site, it is followed by a trademark sign (®), while on the other site it is not.

The contact link is another key difference between the two sites. While the real site has a long list of phone numbers and locations from various different countries, the fake web site has only two addresses and two telephone numbers, both of which are in South Africa. There are no locations in South Africa listed on the actual web site.

I decided to check myself, but I'm not certain that the site is really a fake.

The key is URL itself (www.colgate.co.za). It is aliased to a domain managed by Aqua Online:

Address lookup
canonical name mermaid.aquaonline.com.
aliases www.colgate.co.za
addresses 196.14.236.200
Domain Whois record

Queried whois.frd.ac.za with "colgate.co.za"...

Query error: CouldNotResolveServerName

As it turns out, Aqua Online is the public face of Quickstep394 (Pty) Ltd, which in turn is owned by WPP Group:

Quickstep394 (Pty), Ltd., trading as AquaOnline, operates as a digital advertising agency. Its activities include creating a database of customers profiled on demographics, travel, and holiday-related preferences; digital marketing campaigns and profiled databases; and producing a Web site that advertises and communicates to various audiences. Quickstep394’s activities also include assisting in managing email communications; conceptualizing and deploying strategic initiatives to WAP, Web, and USSD portals; builds interactive software for the touch screen network in retail outlets; and designs information architecture and content structure. The company is based in Gauteng, South Africa. As of 5/21/2007, Quickstep394 (Pty), Ltd is a subsidiary of WPP Group plc.

Interestingly, Quickstep394 only became part of WPP Group a few weeks ago, but the South Africa site has been around since September 2003, and maybe earlier, which suggests that the Colgate-Palmolive contract to do the website went to Aquaonline/Quickstep394, and not to WPP Group. Of course, WPP Group could have had a separate contract with Colgate-Palmolive for other advertising services.

Setting up a fake website is a tough job. I would expect thieves to steal it, but a scan back though ten years of Colgate-Palmolive websites created for the US did not reveal a version of that website that looks like it would have been used to create a faked South African site. But somehow faking out the links to Aqua Online, Quickstep394, and WPP? I can't see how it would have been done.

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