[TYPO3-jobs] Reference Theaft

[Andreas Becker]

Hi all

I have a general - perhaps more ethical - Question:

How do you handle Reference Theaft?

Nearly every week we receive phone calls and mails from Indian companies.
They offer all kind of services and some also TYPO3 services. Not to long
ago we had a call from an indian company which than have send us also some
of there references. Fortunately the developers and agencies of the
websites mentioned as references have inserted the header comment with
their company data. We contacted them and all of them verified that all
mentioned sites have been done by themselves and they not even know the
Indian company and developers.

One TYPO3 Company from UK mentioned as a reference by this Indian Company
even states on their website, that they never outsource and do all
development inhouse. A Serbian TYPO3 Company - even "Silver Member" - also
verified that all mentioned sites have been done by them and not by those
Indian developers.

OK - no this time those references were not ours we could think and close
the case! But IMHO we as a TYPO3 Community and even a TYPO3 Association we
should actually start thinking a bit further and cooperate and perhaps even
check the one or the other case.

Now you could say - you will put them into spam or don't answer those calls
etc. - well OK but this is not a solution to the problem itself.

All companies we have contacted were actually very happy to hear about the
reference theaft. no idea what they will do - probably nothing.

So how do you deal with this?
Do you insert the header comment?
Do you contact a company if another one sends you references which is not
mentioned in the header comment or somewhere else on the page?

Kind regards

Andi