Can We Identify the Person Who Wrote Negative Reviews on Career Connection (Japanese Career Connection)?

Cariconne is a job information site that features company reviews and word-of-mouth information. While it’s a very useful site for getting a real sense of a company’s reputation, it also contains negative reviews that can potentially cause reputational damage.

In this article, we will explain how to identify the poster of a negative review and provide an overview of the typical attorney fees involved.

What is “Career Connection”?

Career Connection, or “KyariKone” in Japanese, is a job and career information site where users can post and view company reviews. In order to view these reviews, users must register as members and either input their career information or post a review. The company that operates Career Connection is Global Way Corporation.

Examples of Negative Reviews Posted on Career Connection (KyariKone)

On Career Connection (KyariKone), current employees, former employees, and job-seeking students can post reviews about a company. In some cases, reviews may be posted that could be considered defamation or invasion of privacy, such as comments about the company’s treatment or impressions of employees during interviews.

Even if the review is negative, if it is not illegal, it is not possible to identify the poster. Therefore, it is necessary to first consider whether or not the review is illegal.

https://monolith.law/reputation/black-companies-dafamation[ja]

Procedure 1 for Identifying Posters: Request for IP Address Disclosure

What is an IP Address?

The first step in identifying a poster on Career Connection (Kyarikone) is to request the disclosure of their IP address. An IP address is a number assigned to a device on the Internet, serving as an online address, as the name suggests.

To post a review on Career Connection, you must register as a member. During registration, you must enter information such as your name, date of birth, and postal code. However, malicious posters may enter false information. (Entering false information is a violation of Career Connection’s ‘Company Survey Terms of Use’.)

【Career Connection Basic Information Registration Screen】

If a poster enters false information, the operating company will not know the poster’s personal information. Therefore, to identify the poster, it is necessary to disclose their IP address.

Request for IP Address Disclosure through Provisional Disposition Procedure

Regarding the removal of reviews on Career Connection, you can request removal through the removal request form, and if it violates the terms of use, it may be removed. However, requests for IP address disclosure generally need to go through the courts. For more details on removing reviews from Career Connection, please refer to the article below.

Requests for IP address disclosure do not require formal litigation and can be made through provisional disposition. While litigation can take a long time until a judgment is issued, provisional disposition results can be obtained in about 1-2 months. The attorney’s fees for this case are:

Approximately 300,000 yen for the retainer fee, and approximately 300,000 yen for the success fee

https://monolith.law/reputation/reputation-lawyers-fee[ja]

This seems to be the market price. The above costs are for requesting both the disclosure of the IP address and the removal of the review at the same time. However, this amount is just a market price, and the cost may vary depending on the content and volume of the review in question.

The Need to Assert and Prove the Illegality of the Review

If there is no illegality in the review, the court will not allow the disclosure of the IP address. Therefore, you must assert and prove the illegality of the review. When requesting removal from the operating company through the removal request form, it is sufficient if the review violates the terms of use, and the presence or absence of illegality does not matter.

For example, Article 3 of Career Connection’s ‘Company Survey Terms of Use’ states:

Acts of posting information containing sexual or bizarre expressions are prohibited

https://id.careerconnection.jp/rules/survey/index.html#anchor_3[ja]

If it is judged to fall under this prohibition, the review may be removed, but not all such reviews necessarily have illegality.

To get the IP address disclosed, you need to:

• Legally assert the illegality of the review
• Prepare evidence to support that assertion

These tasks can be difficult to do on your own, so it is advisable to consult with a lawyer who is knowledgeable about online defamation measures.

Procedure 2 for Identifying the Poster: Prohibition of Log Deletion

If you successfully disclose the IP address, you can identify the provider used by the reviewer. The provider keeps logs of who used that IP address. However, providers do not keep logs indefinitely, and logs will disappear after a certain period. Therefore, it is necessary to initiate legal proceedings regarding the prohibition of log deletion.

In practice, if you issue a notice saying, “We are about to request the disclosure of names and addresses through the court, so please do not delete the logs for a while,” many providers will often comply and not delete the logs. Therefore, there is a high possibility that it is sufficient to just issue a notice without going through legal proceedings. Even if you only issue this notice, you must assert and prove the illegality of the review.

The average cost of asking a lawyer to create this notice is around 100,000 yen.

Procedure 3 for Identifying the Poster: Request for Disclosure of Name and Address

Next, we will make a request to the provider for the disclosure of the poster’s name and address.

This procedure cannot be done through a provisional disposition, so it is necessary to go through a formal court procedure. The name and address are particularly important personal information, so they cannot be disclosed easily. Even if negative reviews that damage the reputation of companies or individuals are posted on platforms like “Kyarikone”, if there is a solid basis for the review and the disclosure of the fact is considered to be in the public interest, it cannot necessarily be said that the post is illegal. It would not be appropriate for the poster’s name and address to be disclosed even in such cases.

Therefore, the court will only allow the disclosure of the name and address if it carefully deliberates and acknowledges the illegality of the review.

The average attorney’s fee for requesting the disclosure of the name and address is,

about 300,000 yen for the initial fee, and about 200,000 yen for the success fee

https://monolith.law/reputation/reputation-lawyers-fee[ja]

It is said. Depending on the content and quantity of the reviews, it may cost more.

Step 4 in Identifying the Poster: Claiming Damages from the Poster

If the procedure in Step 3 is successful and the name and address of the contract holder of the line used by the poster are disclosed, you will be able to claim damages from the poster, such as attorney’s fees incurred in the series of procedures and compensation for emotional distress.

If you can identify the poster and succeed in claiming damages, the victim will not have to bear any financial burden. However, there is a risk of failing to identify the poster, and even if you can identify them, there is a risk that you may not be able to recover all the damages. We explain these in detail in the article below.

https://monolith.law/reputation/disclosure-of-ipaddress[ja]

Summary

As we have seen above, the process of identifying the poster of a review on Career Connection (Japanese: Kyarikone) is complex. In order to successfully navigate this process, a wealth of specialized knowledge about online defamation and law is required.

If you are troubled by negative reviews posted on Career Connection, it is advisable to consult with a lawyer who is knowledgeable about online defamation measures as soon as possible.