Seeing reviews that are really too good to be true? They may be fake.
With Amazon Prime Day 2021 comes great excitement – and, of course, plenty of fantastic deals. However, things are never quite so simple on the internet, where bad actors are always ready and waiting to leap at the opportunity for a quick buck. Fake reviews, from falsified Apple App store reviews to dangerous extensions on the Google Chrome Store make it difficult as a consumer to identify the truth when making buying decisions. That’s not to say all customer reviews out there are fake – plenty of users take the time to legitimately express their thoughts, but when the time comes to finally splash your savings on a Prime Day deal, it’s important to consider that not all is always as it seems. Amazon is no stranger to review stuffing (where positive reviews are published as a favor, or in return for something) and has been at the center of media attention on the matter. These forged reviews take various forms; from small-scale operations involving falsified reviews from family and friends all the way to large operations with businesses dedicated to the sale of bulk fake Amazon reviews. Previously, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has even had to weigh in against fake review groups on social media sites. Things were made more confusing when Amazon introduced global ratings into the product review section, which pooled together reviews from around the world. In some countries, the product available has very different specs, and in some cases completely different. Plus, with the removal of the comments section and the addition of one-tap reviews, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to verify the validity of customer feedback. Amazon does regularly remove fraudulent reviews, and even ceased the operation of its Chinese marketplace following difficulties in monitoring and growth. However, it’s fair to say it has a pretty mammoth task at hand, with a recent blog post from Amazon stating it has more than 300 million active customers and over 1.9 million selling partners worldwide. According to the post, in 2020 Amazon stopped “more than 200 million suspected fake reviews before they were ever seen by a customer”, and over 99% of reviews enforcement was driven by proactive detection. An Amazon spokesperson highlighted to TechRadar the company’s set of policies for both reviewers and selling partners, expressing a commitment to “suspend, ban and take legal action against those who violate these policies.” The spokesperson added to this note, saying Amazon uses “powerful machine learning tools and skilled investigators to analyze over 10 million review submissions weekly, aiming to stop abusive reviews before they are ever published.
