Ahead of Cyber Monday, beware sellers who solicit glowing testimonials with cash and free stuff—and fool even seasoned shoppers
By Josh Zumbrun of The WSJ. Excerpts:
"How does one discover fakers? As Hollenbeck found, they’re hiding in plain sight. More precisely, sellers or their intermediaries publicly solicit fake Amazon reviews on Facebook.
They post descriptions of products, which they say consumers can have free of charge in exchange for a glowing review from a verified purchaser with photos.
The reviewer then buys the product so that the review is labeled as coming from a verified purchaser. Once he or she leaves a review, the seller refunds the purchase price and any transaction costs, and sometimes offers a bonus of as much as $15 a review, according to Hollenbeck; Sherry He, a professor at Michigan State University; and Davide Proserpio, a professor at the University of Southern California"
"The team documented about 1,500 such items, including beauty products, humidifiers, teeth whiteners, cellphone accessories, home-improvement tools, bug zappers and electric foot massagers. The products’ average rating jumped from 4.3 stars before solicitation to 4.5 stars after. After the Facebook recruiting ends, the rating gradually falls back to 4.1 stars."
"sites where users can leave reviews without being verified purchasers are thought by some researchers to have an even worse fake-review problem."
"more frequent online shoppers were likelier to be influenced by fake reviews because they’re accustomed to quickly assessing products via things such as rating and number of reviews"
"The U.K.’s Department for Business and Trade estimated earlier this year that 11% to 15% of reviews for major product categories are fake."
"Last year, Amazon filed a lawsuit against 10,000 Facebook group administrators who it said were soliciting fake reviews. But as old groups get closed down, new ones are created. Many of the sellers are overseas, and continually use new aliases and sock-puppet accounts."
"Amazon eventually deleted many of the fake reviews, but often with a lag of 100 days."
"The company said it had taken legal action against 152 bad actors, and blocked over 200 million suspected fake reviews in 2022 alone.
“Facebook periodically deletes the groups and they pop back up again a week later,” said Hollenbeck."
"(Facebook’s policies prohibit buying, selling or trading for fraudulent reviews. The company has filed lawsuits against individuals perpetrating e-commerce abuse on its platform, including a fake review scheme.)"
"Hollenbeck says one surprising red flag is photos. Fake reviews are far more likely to have pictures than genuine ones. After all, who shares a banal photo of some minor consumer good?
Hollenbeck says he’s always cautious about those products that are one of four or five nearly identical search results. They’re just the sort of product that would benefit from a tiny ratings bump that a fake review can deliver."
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