Not Allowed to Post Reviews or Comments Amazon
Unscrupulous sellers are using a range of tactics to evade detection on Amazon and mislead shoppers with faux reviews, a Which? investigation has revealed.
After analysing thousands of reviews across hundreds of products, evidence emerged of exactly how Amazon sellers have found intricate ways to 'game' the system. We institute:
- Products with hundreds of 'variations', being used to create large numbers of positive reviews.
- Old products whose positive reviews were being used to promote new, unrelated products.
- Facebook review groups are 'dorsum': tens of thousands populate a Facebook customs of incentivised reviewers, posting hundreds of products per hour.
- Amazon customers whose user accounts take been hacked and used to publish thousands of imitation reviews.
Amazon production variation misuse
One seller tactic to boost positive reviews and remain undetected is product variation misuse. Legitimate sellers use variations to grouping different sizes of the aforementioned glaze or different colours of the aforementioned mug nether a unmarried product ID or ASIN – Amazon Standard Identification Number, ultimately making your Amazon shopping a smoother experience.
But scammers have establish a loophole, and are using the feature to create dozens, or in some cases hundreds, of spurious product variations, called things like 'Black1/Black2/Black3'. In one case nosotros constitute five-star reviews from the same Amazon profile left across one hundred variations of a product. Sellers can exercise this in order to flood their products with false reviews through Amazon'southward dorsum door.
'If multiple people review the aforementioned product in a short space of time, that tin flag a warning. A pop-up appears from Amazon maxim y'all tin no longer review the product,' said Prabhat Shah, from Online Seller Uk, a Manchester-based Amazon Training provider.
Shah said that he believed sellers were creating spurious variations to become around Amazon's defences, adding: 'When you use different variations, each is using a unlike ASIN then Amazon won't flag a warning. It's wrong, just quite clever in a style.'
A pair of SDFLAYER headphones, which topped the headphones searching listings on one June, had twoscore seemingly meaningless colour variations, and a steady stream of nearly 17 5-star reviews a twenty-four hours.
In another case, a Jumper laptop featured 49 spurious variations among its 65 reviews, all of them uploaded in a unmarried twenty-four hour period. Amazon removed the reviews without being prompted. But by 8 June, 3 new five-star reviews had appeared – all with every bit baroque variation names. Amazon has conspicuously woken upwards to the issue of fake reviews, but it feels a bit like a game of whack-a-mole when information technology comes to staying on top of the larger effect.
Merging products
Variation abuse isn't the only way unscrupulous sellers are manipulating product ID codes to generate positive reviews.
We found examples of sellers merging dormant or unavailable products with new or existing production listings every bit a way to transfer positive reviews from one to another. Often the reviews will exist for a completely different production – nosotros've uncovered soap dispenser and telephone screen cover reviews on headphones. In some cases the merged reviews will even have been dated before the product appears to have gone on sale.
Nosotros found a smartwatch with 938 reviews dating back to 2011, despite existence first listed for sale in January 2019.
On 14 June, the aforementioned Jumper laptop referenced above accumulated around 200 additional reviews, most of which were from 2017. Amazon states that the date the laptop was start available was 3 June 2019, and information technology seems likely that these boosted references were merged onto the production from another listing.
It'due south non uncommon for production listings of this type to end up with hundreds of reviews, making information technology difficult to spot rogue reviews without scrolling through multiple pages.
In response to the findings, Amazon said that whatever attempt to manipulate client reviews is strictly prohibited, and that it invests significant resources to protect the integrity of its reviews.
Facebook review groups
In our 2018 investigation into fake reviews, we went secret and found Facebook Groups with tens of thousands of members. These groups are designed to generate incentivised positive reviews for Amazon product purchases. In a follow-up, we plant that 4 of the five groups were still active – and had nearly 70,000 members. We contacted Facebook and it removed the four groups nosotros flagged.
However, our most recent investigation revealed more 70 similar groups. One had more than 22,000 members, while another two had more than 19,000 members each.
Facebook review groups are incredibly active places. In but ane group we counted 133 new posts in an 60 minutes.
These groups generate 'verified purchase' reviews on Amazon on a potentially huge calibration, which could lead you to retrieve that the reviews are genuine. And if a group is shut down, some other quickly pops upwardly in its place. One review grouping anticipated the issue, alerting members to an alternative group in case of a shut down.
How constructive are they at generating positive reviews? We checked 6 products establish on these groups on Amazon and found that 92% of the customer reviews were five-star. The products had, on average, a customer score of 4.8 out of five, and many of the customer reviews also included photos, a telltale sign of incentivised review groups.
On 21 June, the Contest and Markets Authority (CMA) urged both Facebook and eBay to human activity on the sale of imitation reviews. Facebook informed the CMA that most of the 26 groups it reported had been removed, but we found dozens more since, based on associated search terms.
Nosotros contacted Facebook about the findings, and a spokesperson said: 'Fraudulent action is not allowed on Facebook, including the trading of false reviews, and we have removed all of the groups Which? reported to us. We know there is more to practice to tackle this issue, which is why we've tripled the size of our safety and security team to 30,000 and continue to invest in technology to help proactively prevent this kind of abuse.'
eBay sellers offering a '5-star' review service
Nosotros also found eBay listings from people 'selling' a 5-star review – a service, effectively, where someone will write your product or visitor a glowing review for a cost. These were offered for a range of platforms including Google, Tripadvisor, Trustpilot or in some cases 'any other platform yous desire'.
Since the CMA reported these listings to eBay, it appears as though they accept been successfully removed.
Hacking genuine Amazon accounts
Disturbingly, we've heard from several Which? members who have had their Amazon accounts hacked, and reviews left on multiple products from their profile.
I member told the states that their account was hacked overnight and 84 reviews were left in a affair of hours on cheap engineering products, including headphones, and that their business relationship was hacked once again within hours of Amazon reinstating it.
One Which? reader told united states that a imitation reviewer hacked their profile and left two,552 reviews across a variety of products.
In both cases, the victims had to remove the simulated reviews themselves – a manual procedure.
In response to these bug, Amazon warned about the dangers of 'phishing' emails that may appear to come from Amazon but direct recipients to a fake website where they might be asked to provide sensitive information. It advises all customers to go directly to Amazon before making whatever changes to their account.
Using unverified reviews to top the rankings
Most three months later discovering thousands of 'faux' customer reviews on pop tech , Which? searched the suspect categories again. Since we reported our findings to Amazon in April, this item issue has dramatically improved – in fact insufficiently few unverified reviews were found.
Our findings were corroborated by analysts ReviewMeta, who found that the number of unverified reviews posted on Amazon had gradually dropped from a loftier of 35% in March to simply 5% in May.
This particular issue certainly seems to take been improved, but it hasn't been eradicated.
More than ane in 10 products we analysed had received ten or more than reviews in a unmarried mean solar day – a conservative threshold for suspicious activity when you consider that Samsung phones we analysed, which accept hundreds more overall reviews than the products we're concerned well-nigh, never received more than seven reviews in a 24-hour period.
Some 11 products with between 0% and 50% verified reviews connected to detect their way onto the first page of the Amazon.co.uk searches we carried out.
Interestingly, it seemed that products with a actually low proportion of verified reviews skewed towards the top of the rankings. As this graph shows, there is a striking similarity between unverified reviews, products with multiple variations and review floods in this regard: those products with the near suspicious review history are making their mode to the top of search pages.
This finding is a huge business organization for consumers, and we strongly advise you to await beyond the products at the meridian handful of products when making a quick Amazon purchase. But it likewise begs the question: why isn't Amazon able to preclude products with suspicious review patterns climbing to the top of the results?
Which? readers report issues with Amazon
The problem with fake reviews isn't sectional to the product categories we've looked at for our investigation.
We've been asking Which? readers to study their ain experiences of faux reviews. To date we've received nearly 90 emails from people flagging faux reviews and sharing their own stories.
- One member received eight requests from a seller to change a three star rating to a five star rating on a solar floodlight from a Chinese manufacturer, and offered a partial refund for doing so.
- Another left a poor review for a product on Amazon, and was contacted past the visitor three times with the offer of a gift voucher for irresolute to a five star review.
- 1 person bought a product from Red china via Amazon that 'didn't piece of work at all', then left a suitable review. The seller offered a £25 Amazon gift card to remove the review. The buyer contacted Amazon via live chat, and was told they would 'look into it'. There was no further communication.
- A buyer purchased a mobile phone screen protector based on the fact that all of the reviews were five star, but looked again when they received the particular (which differed from the list) and realised that many of the reviews were duplicated dozens of times and were all posted on the same date.
- Reports of suspicious seller reviews, including 1 that received 300 reviews from the same person.
We are still interested in hearing from you about your experiences of simulated reviews – arrive touch through fakereviews@which.co.britain
New tips for spotting fake reviews
Get the latest: Amazon sorts 'top reviews' by default, and so you won't see the most recent reviews starting time merely the ones that have been voted every bit 'helpful' by other reviewers. Sort by 'recent reviews' instead.
Beware large numbers: If you come across hundreds, or even thousands of reviews – be suspicious, peculiarly if they are largely positive. If it's a brand you oasis't heard of, or a relatively inexpensive product, then consider how likely it is that so many people would accept left a review.
Be cautious of images: images of a product can be helpful, just we've constitute that incentivised review sellers ordinarily request images in exchange for a refund. Consider how likely it would exist for someone to include a range of images in a review if they weren't asked.
Watch out for variations: If product variations (shown under the review engagement) have obscure names or information technology seems unusual to see and then many, be wary. It'due south unlikely that there are more than 10 variations of a pair of headphones, while multiple variations are fairly common for laptops, for example.
For more tips for avoiding suspicious reviews, run across our guide on how to spot fake reviews.
Data analysis and additional content by Josh Robbins and Paul Lester
Source: https://www.which.co.uk/news/2019/07/exposed-the-tricks-sellers-use-to-post-fake-reviews-on-amazon/
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