Positive posts make money for crisis firms

An underground business, that charges companies high fees to delete negative news or posts against them, has been flourishing in the run-up to World Consumer Rights Day today, normally regarded as the most important day to highlight a company's good reputation.

Such business operators describe themselves as "public relation experts for dealing with crises" and release their mobile phone numbers or contact details through online instant messaging programs such as QQ on the Internet.

Although there is no data available on the number of operators, a Baidu search in Chinese of "professional post-deleting company in Beijing" revealed a total of 679,000 pages.