How is that not treated as fraud? As you pointed out, with a little bit of detective work (which is well beyond the means and motivation of a casual internet user, but well within reach of a consumer protection agency) it's fairly easy to expose these manipulative tactics. Commercial communication ought to be clearly labelled as such.
Because the cyberspace was lawless for far too long. Justice systems worldwide were too ill-equipped to handle anything involving computers logically, effectively nullifying broad ranges of laws.
b) The tricky part is probably proving a business relationship. Otherwise someone could be a jerk and start shilling for their competitors just to get them fined.
