[1] The Ripoff Report has been online since December 1998 and is operated by Xcentric Ventures, LLC which is based in Tempe, Arizona.

[2] In 2023 an Australian judge found the company purports to be a consumer review site but profits from extortive business practices.

[7] According to Bloomberg Businessweek, this mechanism is an example of "how to make money rebuilding reputations: have them destroyed first", which is why a federal court stated that victims have "probable cause to sue for extortion and racketeering".

[10] Ripoff Report sells ad space on its website[1][7] and offers companies the option to pay for complaint investigations, which can cost from US$5,500 to over $100,000.

"[9] By creating an account, a user agrees to exclusive venue in Arizona for any legal dispute arising from his or her posting.

[18] Two Australians sued Google over their failure to remove links to defamatory content on Ripoff Report.

[19] In 2015, Duffy prevailed in her defamation case against Google for serving libelous comments, originating from Ripoff Report, and allowing its auto-complete function to assist users in finding the content.

[23] In website pages of Public Citizen, it was noted that Ripoff Report has received some criticism of its "Corporate Advocacy, Business Remediation & Customer Satisfaction Program,"[24] particularly whether Ripoff Report sufficiently discloses all facts that would influence the public's perception of the program.

[26] In May 2014 the Australian search engine Yahoo!7 blocked the Ripoff Report after multiple defamation complaints.

[28] Ripoff Report's publisher, Xcentric Ventures, LLC, unsuccessfully sued consumers and their attorneys for malicious prosecution in federal district court in Phoenix, Arizona in 2011.

The Defamation Action League's strategy involved "protesting" the companies which hosted Ripoff Report and badbusinessbureau.com by setting up "protest sites" and engaging in annoyance strategies such as placing classified ads with the companies' telephone numbers for products they aren't selling or sending mass emails to other customers.

[32][33] In March 2017, the Italian Data Protection Authority affirmed that Ripoff Report's activities — namely, Ed Magedson's requests for money to edit web pages — are illegal in Italy.