Are you buying things online trusting on others’ reviews? Think again then! There is a chance you might end up ordering a wrong product based on these reviews. The Guardian, recently, revealed that fake reviewers, backed by Amazon’s sellers, post wrong details about the products on Facebook Groups to influence customers.
This scam is mainly supported by many large and small companies as well as by entrepreneurs, who are spreading false positive reviews on Facebook about their products listed on Amazon to its 2.6 billion users globally. Similarly the reviewers have to really pay for the items, Amazon is fooled into believing that the buyer is genuine but after leaving a glowing review, the product manufacturing company refunds the purchase price and sometimes also pays an extra fee.
A brand name used by UK-based Consumers’ Association, ‘Which?’, said that nearly all of the Facebook groups it uncovered last autumn were still active, as per the report. Earlier this week, ‘Which?’ claimed that Amazon’s system was being undermined by a flood of fake five-star reviews for some of the unfamiliar brands.
“Researchers analysed listings of hundreds of popular tech products and found top-rated items were dominated such as Itshiny, Vogek and Aitalk, many with thousands of unverified reviews,” this report also claims. In October 2018, ‘Which?’ said two large Facebook groups and few smaller groups, may have up to 87,000 members potentially engaged in writing fake reviews.
“We don’t allow people to facilitate or encourage the trade of fake user reviews. The groups brought to our attention have now been removed for violating our policies,” the report quoted Facebook as telling ‘Which?’ “We are continuously urging people to use our reporting tools to flag the content they think breaks our rules.”
On the other side, Amazon claimed that it will invests significant resources to protect the integrity of reviews on its site, the report said. “We have clear participation guidelines for both reviewers and selling partners, and we suspend, ban and take legal action on those who violate our policies,” the report quoted Amazon as saying.
