Naver Files Criminal Complaint Against Toss Over Alleged Search Ranking Distortion

[Anchor]

Naver has filed a criminal complaint with the police against the financial platform Toss for alleged business obstruction. Naver claims that Toss's point-reward events for users are distorting its search rankings.

Reporter Kim Hye-min has the exclusive report.

[Reporter]

This is the attendance check mission on the Toss app.

We tried the find related tags feature.

After searching for a specific product on Naver's search bar, going to the product details page, and entering the correct answer found in the tags at the bottom, 5 won in points were credited.

There are also missions where users search for specific places on Naver to find menu prices or enter walking distances.

It is a so-called app-tech marketing strategy that awards small points to users to encourage them to visit the app every day.

It has been confirmed that regarding this marketing practice, Naver filed a complaint against Viva Republica, the operator of Toss, with the Gyeonggi Nambu Provincial Police Agency early this year.

The charges are business obstruction and violations of the Information and Communications Network Act.

Naver argues that when specific search traffic concentrates on Naver Store and Place, it distorts search rankings in the process, causing harm to ordinary consumers and other businesses.

[Person A / Agency Representative: From the perspective of advertisers, they could have ranked first or second based on pure sales volume or basic traffic alone, but if they get pushed down to fifth or sixth because of programs like this, a third of their sales evaporate, and they have to spend money again just to avoid falling behind...]=

While similar app-tech marketing utilizing Naver searches exists on other company apps, Toss's traffic volume is reportedly overwhelming at several million cases per day.

It was confirmed that Naver sent official letters last year to companies including Toss demanding them to halt activities that could undermine the reliability of Naver's services, and that companies other than Toss replied that they had immediately suspended them.

The police have reportedly received related data from Naver, investigated Naver employees as reference witnesses, and subsequently booked Toss officials.

They plan to summon Toss-related individuals for questioning soon.

In response, Toss stated, "As this is a matter under police investigation, we cannot provide detailed comments."

(Video Editing: Lee Hong-myung, Design: Park Tae-young, VJ: Jeong Han-wook, Lee Ji-hwan)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.