you are perusing the shelves of a local bookstore, and you see the memoir of count chocula or the collected letters of mr. whipple. might you be suspicious? well, in the blogosphere, companies are trying to use legitimate-looking blogs as adsnicknamed "flogs" for "fake blogs." but increasingly, savvy bloggers are thwarting them.

one example: sony was recently outed when one of its marketing firms, zipatoni, created "all i want for christmas is a psp," a flog written by two "teenagers" who perform a series of antics to convince their parents to buy them psps for christmas. and high-profile pr firm edelman was chastised by many web sites for creating a flog for wal-mart called "wal-marting across america." other flogs from coke and mcdonald's have also been unmasked.

"there's so much interest in blogging as a new channel for marketing, and people who are on top of new blogs that attract attention will figure it out," says debbie weil, corporate blogging consultant and author of the corporate blogging book.

bloggers looking to out flogs are mostly using sites that access the whois database, which was opened to the public in 2006. domain owners can still hide this information by using third-party services such as domains by proxy, but it's getting harder to keep flogs under wraps. even so, weil predicts that flogs will continue to appear, because companies are often unaware of every tactic ad agencies use.

though there's no law currently preventing flogs, there are plans in the u.k. to pass a law that would make it illegal for companies to create blogs under false identities. critics, however, question how effectively the law would be enforced.