See how Google uncovers online scams

A buddy saw a second-hand computer on http://es.pconline.com.cn/sell.jsp?id=380753. He thought the configuration and price were good, so he wanted to buy it. I also felt that there seemed to be fewer scams on PConline, so I didn't think too much about it.

Later, I suddenly felt uneasy and decided to do some checking.

First, I opened the user information. The name was "Zhang Li," and the email was [email protected], so we decided to start from this email address.

I used Google to search for this email address and found several results, all about selling second-hand computers. When I clicked on them, the titles were similar, but the configurations were different. This made me a bit suspicious.

Then I searched using "jfang_xuxu" because this name followed a regular pattern and wasn't one of those sequential email names registered by bots. It might have been used as an ID before and could provide more information.

This time, the search returned seven results, as shown in the picture:

The first few were listings posted by this person, the same as the ones I found earlier—computers with similar descriptions, which clearly indicated a major problem.

The most meaningful result was:

**Tech Zhongguancun - Complaint Center**

According to your complaint, we found that this user has multiple usernames: wt1970/chenhuan1972/jfang_xuxu/xukun7272/chenhuan1973/youth20333. They post various kinds of advertisements. We have now taken action against their information...

Upon further investigation, I discovered that they were all posting ads for second-hand computers in a similar format. Some complaints mentioned fake CPUs, confirming that this was undoubtedly a scammer.

It seems that in what we call a virtual society, it's actually less virtual. Everything people do in public is recorded. So-called credit evaluation systems are far less effective than knowing what someone has done in the past. Of course, this depends on powerful search engines. Without effective means of organizing information, finding relevant data in a vast sea of information would be extremely difficult.

Speaking of which, I wonder if Baidu's loyal users can enjoy such convenience?

The results I found were rather disappointing and far beyond my expectations. There were only two results, both from the same website, and they provided no useful reference points. See the picture:

It looks like they will just get scammed.

I really can't figure out why some people always say that Baidu's Chinese search capabilities are much better than Google's. Every time I check, I'm always disappointed. Moreover, Google adheres to the robot.txt protocol and doesn't index certain information, while Baidu rudely ignores this rule. Despite this, the quality of the results is still so far apart.

Could someone explain to me why you think Baidu's Chinese search is better than Google's?