Indiegogo is safe haven for fraudulent crowdfunding campaigns

Looks like Indiegogo is on the fast track to lose any (if all) credibility it might still have, thanks to a new fraudulent campaign that is raising all the red flags... And instead of doing something about it, Indiegogo is actually dealing with it in the worst possible way!

There are a lot of people that already consider Indiegogo to be the place for crowdfunding projects that are not accepted in Kickstarter. My own experience with it as not been very positive. I've backed up over a dozen projects, including one that is yet to deliver the promised goods one year(!) after the due date, and one that was a simple repackaging of an existing "chinese" product... at a higher price, of course.

In both cases, Indiegogo response was/is "we have nothing to do with it".

Now, there's a new project that has raised nearly a million dollars and might become the last nail in Indiegogo's reputation coffin. GoBe claims to be able to monitor your calorie intake by using a simple electronic bracelet on your wrist. Experts in the area say it's impossible to do so - but the worse part is that everything surrounding the project is alarming.

The company claims to be based in San Francisco but is in fact operated from Moscow. Their american presence is simply a dummy corporation and a PR-office. They also claimed to have shown their product at CES, but weren't even there. Their CEO Artem Shipitsyn’s Indiegogo biography isn't the same as the one in his LinkedIn page; and none of his team is traceable to anything but this one Indiegogo campaign.


So, the issue is: Indigogo claims to put all campaigns through a fraud review that "allows them to catch any and all cases of fraud". And when confronted with all this, what did they do?

Yes... what they did was remove that claim and reference to their fraud review process!

Can't really believe they would have done this, but it goes in line with my previous experiences with them. Looks like they're simply interested in receiving their cut of the funding, whatever it may be, whether fraudulent or not.

Next time you're considering backing an Indigeogo campaign... it's something you might be aware of.

Healbe GoBe tracks your calorie intake automatically

There's a reason why backups and other tasks should be left to automated systems. Humans are not to good at doing repetitive tasks, and that's why the current generation of fitness trackers are still not as good as we'd like. But that's about to change, thanks to trackers like this Healbe GoBe that popped up in Indiegogo.

Current generation trackers are great at telling us how many steps you walked and if you moved around in your sleep - but their apps require you to tell them what you eat, for breakfast, lunch and dinner (as well as snacks), and how many glasses of water you drank... every single day. That's something most people might do for a week, or even for a month... but inevitably they'll just stop doing it and forgetting about it.

This GoBe changes all that, as it incorporates sensors that, according to its creators, allow it to measure your calorie intake automatically - as well as hydration levels, hear rate, stress levels, and other body parameters. That will take care of things, getting rid of the "problem" part of the equation - the users themselves - and monitoring all the data automatically without user intervention (other than wearing it, that is.)

If you're interested, GoBe is available for $154 and is planned to be delivered by June.