The British findings echo a scandal in America, where investigators found that nearly 18 million of 22 million responses to a 2017 consultation on internet regulation were fake.American broadband companies had funded a campaign to scrap rules preventing internet providers from favouring some websites over others. But marketing firms working on the campaign submitted more than 8.5 million fake responses, using people’s names without their knowledge.Another 9.3 million fake responses supported keeping the rules, most submitted using fictitious identities by a student operating automated software.The fraud was exposed in a report published by New York Attorney General Letitia James on May 6, 2021. Three marketing companies agreed to pay more than $4.4 million in penalties and repayments, although investigators found no evidence that the broadband companies knew their contractors were fabricating responses.In Britain, officials excluded the bogus vaping submissions before analysing the consultation results.