It’s not uncommon for scammers to use celebrity faces and false endorsements to sell their products on social media.
And it seems not even royals are immune to it, with Princess Mary of Denmark said to be the latest embroiled in a scam.
A number of publications have reported that the Danish royal’s name has been falsely linked to a number of ‘dangerous’ diet pills labelled ‘Pure Cambogia Ultra’ and ‘Pure Life Cleanse.’
Targeted: Princess Mary’s name has reportedly been falsely linked to a number of ‘dangerous’ diet pills labelled ‘Pure Cambogia Ultra’ and ‘Pure Life Cleanse’
False: According to Woman’s Day, the ad about Princess Mary claimed that the she turned to the weight loss product to help her lose weight after giving birth to her twins, now five
Many scammers have been selling weight loss products they claim contain Garcinia Cambogia, a ‘metabolism boosting’ citrus fruit that grows in Southeast Asia, for years.
To do so, celebrity names like Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears and Khloe Kardashian have been used to endorse the pills without permission.
According to Woman’s Day, the ad about Princess Mary claimed that she turned to the weight loss product to help her lose weight after giving birth to her twins, now five.
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Not the only one: Scammers have been selling weight loss products they claim contain Garcinia Cambogia for years (pictured using Khloe Kardashian and a stolen Women’s Health logo to sell the products)
Bizarre: ‘When she was at her heaviest she weighed 86kg and after exercising without success, she got depressed and her life fell apart,’ the ad reportedly read
‘My body fat simply melted away like butter’: They also falsely quoted the royal as saying she endorsed the product
‘When she was at her heaviest she weighed 86kg and after exercising without success, she got depressed and her life fell apart,’ the ad reportedly read.
They also falsely quoted the royal as saying she endorsed the product.
‘I did not even have to change my diet or exercise, my body fat simply melted away like butter!’
Woman’s Day writes that the royal court of Denmark has demanded these false ads be recalled and confirmed that they were not true.
Garcinia cambogia, a tropical fruit also known as the Malabar tamarind, is a popular weight-loss supplement.
People say it blocks your body’s ability to make fat and it puts the brakes on your appetite. It could help keep blood sugar and cholesterol levels in check, too.
In 2009, the Food and Drug Administration warned everyone to stop using a weight-loss product that contained garcinia cambogia because some people taking it got serious problems.
The product had other ingredients, too, so it’s not clear that garcinia cambogia was to blame. While some research suggests the supplement is safe for your liver, other research says no.
Source: WebMD
No truth to it: Woman’s Day writes that the royal court of Denmark has demanded these false ads be recalled and confirmed that they were not true
Scandal: The Princess’ scam also made the cover of Danish magazine Her Nu
According to New Idea, ‘insiders’ say Princess Mary is ‘furious’ and ‘horrified that girls and women think she is endorsing controversial diet products’ as she is a patron of the World Health Organisation and a strong advocate for a healthy, active lifestyle.
Another issue is that those purchasing the pills as a result of the endorsement often have no clue what they are buying or who they are truly buying them from.
The story also made the cover of Danish magazine Her Nu.
Princess Mary is just one of many celebrities who have found themselves being used to promote the product, with celebrity doctor, Dr Oz, also a target.
One of many: Princess Mary is just one of many celebrities who have found themselves being used to promote the product, with celebrity doctor, Dr Oz, also a target
In 2013, Dr Oz promoted the Garcinia Cambogia products on a show in which it was called a ‘revolutionary fat buster’ and a weight loss ‘breakthrough.’
As a result, his words have been used to sell countless ‘dodgy’ products and he was mentioned in the ad featuring Princess Mary where it was falsely claimed that he ‘introduced’ her to the product.
In February, Dr Oz was sued for promoting Garcinia Cambogia, which ‘all credible scientific evidence’ proves doesn’t work, despite not naming any brands.
A representative for The Dr Oz Show has since said the lawsuit is an attack on free speech.
‘As we have always explained to our viewers, The Dr Oz Show does not sell these products nor does he have any financial ties to these companies,’ they told TMZ.
Dangerous? A number of celebrity photos have been stolen to sell the supplements
Khloe Kardashian is also being used to sell the controversial product in an ad almost identical to the one Princess Mary was named in.
‘Khloe Kardashian, who wore a size 18 then, watched the pounds melt away. At her heaviest she weighed 237 pounds, after trying everything possible without any success, she fell into depression and her life almost fell apart,’ it reads.
‘She didn’t want surgery and didn’t know what to do next, until she saw Doctor Oz talk about Garcinia Pure Select and Vital Cleanse Complete.
Not proven: Garcinia Cambogia is a ‘metabolism boosting’ citrus fruit that grows in Southeast Asia
‘Khloe decided to give it a try, considering she had nothing to lose. That day changed her life forever. Now others are following her lead.’
Women’s Health Magazine has also been targeted by the scammers, who often use their logo to sell the products.
‘Women’s Health does not endorse African Mango Diet Pills, Garcinia Cambogia Extract, Wholemega Diet Pills, or Green Coffee Bean Extract, or Raspberry Ketone Diet,’ they said in a statement.
You’ve probably heard that WordPress is open-source software, and may know that it’s created and run by volunteers. WordPress enthusiasts share many examples of how WordPress changed people’s lives for the better. This monthly series shares some of those lesser-known, amazing stories.
Alice Orru was born in Sardinia, an island in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. As a child, she dreamt of becoming a flight attendant, traveling the world, and speaking many foreign languages.
Unable to meet the height requirements of her chosen profession, Orru ended up choosing a different path in life, following the Italian mantra: “You have to study something that will guarantee a stable and secure job for life.”
The unemployment rate in Sardinia is very high, a challenge shared throughout the surrounding islands. In addition to that, Alice wasn’t that keen on having the same job all her life, as her parents had.
When Orru was 22 she moved to Siena, Tuscany, to finish her studies. That is when she created her first personal blog. The website was built on an Italian platform named Tiscali, which she later migrated to WordPress.com.
After 2 years in Tuscany Orru moved to Strasbourg, France. She studied French and worked several jobs while living there. Her first serious job was in Milan – working 40 hours/week in the marketing department of a large, international company. She found herself surrounded by ambitious colleagues and a boss who constantly requested extra —unpaid— working hours per day.
Alice gave up blogging because she wasn’t feeling inspired enough to write. She questioned whether she really wanted to do that job forever; working 10 hours per day under the neon lights of an office. It forced her to set aside her dreams for the time being, and for a while, she mainly lived for the weekends.
Alice decided to leave the job and moved to Barcelona, Spain, all by herself, in 2012.
After a few months of intense Spanish learning at the university, she found a job in an international clinic as a “Patient Coordinator.” Orru assisted international patients coming to Barcelona for their treatments. She acted as their translator, interpreter and administrative consultant.
Patients came from Italy, France, England, Morocco, Senegal, and several other countries. Alice was so inspired by some of their stories, that she started to write again: She dusted off her WordPress blog and filled it with stories about her new life in Barcelona and some of the women she met at the clinic. “I was feeling stronger and more independent than ever,” Orru expressed.
In the summer of 2015, Alice was writing on her blog and got stuck with a technical problem. While she was searching through the WordPress.com documentation, she saw a pop-up in the bottom right corner of her screen. It was a staff member of Automattic, checking if she needed help. They chatted for a few minutes and the problem was solved. Alice left the chat with one question, though: how did that person on chat find a support job with WordPress?
Alice found the official WordPress job page: jobs.wordpress.net and noticed a job offer that caught her attention: WP Media, a French startup, was looking for a polyglot and remote customer service teammate for one of their plugins, WP Rocket. She read their requirements: fluency in English, French and possibly other languages, excellent experience with WordPress, and some coding skills.
She knew she didn’t meet all the requirements, but could speak 4 languages, and she had a WordPress blog. She didn’t know anything about PHP, though. Orru had been a WordPress.com user for years and knew she was ready to learn more.
Orru wrote a cover letter and sent her CV. A Skype interview was conducted and several days later she received the news that she had gotten the job!
The early days in her new job were intense. Alice felt inexperienced but was supported by her teammates. She started studying and reading everything about WordPress for beginners. Initially, she answered easy tickets from customers. All the while her teammates were sending useful material to read, setting up video-calls for 1 to 1 training, and encouraging her the entire time.
Soon, Orru was replying to customers whose first language was either Spanish or Italian in their native language. This was much appreciated and resulted in several happy comments. Until that moment the plugin’s support had been offered only in English and French.
At WordCamp Paris 2016, one of Alice’s teammates introduced her to how the WordPress community collaborated and kept in contact through Slack.
“You speak multiple languages, why don’t you try to contribute to the polyglots team?” he asked.
Alice knew very little about contributing to WordPress. She had only been working for WP Media for 6 months and didn’t feel ready to dive into a new challenge and start also contributing to WordPress.
Yet, curiosity led her to join both the local Italian and the global WordPress Community on Slack. For the first few months, she mainly observed what was happening the channels. Then, she attended WordCamp Milan and met some members of the Italian Polyglots team.
It was love at first string! Laura, one of the General Translation Editors (GTE) for Italy, taught her how to start contributing and translating, following the polyglots guidelines. She also told her about the Italian community’s big efforts to work together, consistently, to boost and grow WordPress related events in Italy.
With her teammates’ encouragement, Orru applied to WordCamps as a speaker and gave her first talk in December 2016 at WordCamp Barcelona. After that, she both spoke at WordCamp Torino on April 2017 and at WordCamp Europe in 2017.
Orru knows that her experiences are not just due to luck. She used her previous skills and passions and adapted them to a new career and life path.
“We all have some skills; and if we don’t know which they are exactly, we should take some time to make a list of the things we’re really good at. With that in mind, just try. Apply. Get involved. Don’t get stuck in the feeling of ‘I can’t do it because I don’t know enough’. So that’s what I did. Without even realizing it, I started putting into reality the dream of the little girl who was born on an island and wanted to travel and speak different languages.WordPress made this possible. I’m now part of a big community, and I am proud of it.”
Alice Orru
This post is based on an article originally published on HeroPress.com, a community initiative created by Topher DeRosia. HeroPress highlights people in the WordPress community who have overcome barriers and whose stories would otherwise go unheard.
Meet more WordPress community members over at HeroPress.com!
Marcel Pociot, our teams and me have worked hard to create Ignition, the brand new error page in Laravel 6. Earlier this week I had the pleasure of being invited to the stream of Gary Hockin where we talked about the internals of Ignation.
It’s the spookiest time of the year, but that doesn’t mean you should be afraid of working on the code. This issue rounds up tools and techniques to make you a fearless coder: static analysis, writing WordPress plugins, protecting against DDoS attacks, and more. The post Coding Without Fe...
A Showcase of Websites That Have Been Inspired by Wireframes – A collection of gorgeously-designed websites that take cues from wireframes.
Multi-Million Dollar HTML – How a simple bit of form-centric HTML can become a usability nightmare.
uiprint – A collection of printable wireframes, mockups and sketchpads for your projects.
HTTP/3: the past, the present, and the future – A look at the increased performance and security of HTTP/3.
Things you may not know about Chrome DevTools – 10 lesser-known functions that make inspecting your sites even better.
Butter Cake – Check out this modern, lightweight CSS framework.
Devices – A free collection of device mockups from Facebook.
Bringing the Curtain Effect to Your Website with These Snippets – Dress up your designs with this interpretation of a classic effect.
Unicorn Vector Gradients – A free collection of unicorn-themed gradients. You know you want them.
Excel to HTML – Use this add-in to get perfect HTML table code from Excel spreadsheets.
Crafting Stylised Mouse Trails With OGL – Learn how to create a jaw-dropping effect with WebGL.
Two ways to create an image with a colour overlay in CSS – Add to your site’s aesthetic and make text more legible with this effect.
How Being Uncomfortable Can Make You a Better Web Designer – Comfort = Stagnation. How putting yourself into uncomfortable situations can refresh your career.
Why version history is not version control – The many benefits of a branch-based workflow.
Introducing the 2019 UX Designers to Watch – Adobe profiles up-and-coming designers from around the globe.
Screen Size Map – An interactive map displaying various screen resolutions and usage statistics.
Is It Worth the Money? Making Wise Investments in Your Design Business – Tips for making smart decisions with your money.
Fresh Folk – An illustration library full of mix-and-match people and objects.
How CSS Grid changes the way we think about structuring our content – Using the new-fangled layout technique to simplify how we build websites.
The post Weekly News for Designers № 508 appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.
Show Notes Cascadia PHP
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This episode is sponsored by Using the WordPress REST API
The post It’s the Booze Talking: PHP, the next 25 appeared first on Voices of the ElePHPant.
The PHP team is glad to announce the third release candidate of PHP 7.4: PHP 7.4.0RC3. This continues the PHP 7.4 release cycle, the rough outline of which is specified in the PHP Wiki. Please DO NOT use this version in production, it is an early test version. For source downloads of PHP 7.4.0RC3 pl...
Have you ever wondered how to provide API validation errors and translations for different locales? This beginner post will show you how to get started with setting a locale in a stateless Laravel API and testing various locale validation messages.
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