Books and products on Amazon are being pushed to the top of bestseller lists by fake reviews, it has emerged.
Using stolen identities – including those of British teenage girls – the bogus reviewers charge as little as £3 (R60) to post ratings on the website.
As well as writing five-star reviews to help boost sales, they also offer to fabricate negative posts for individuals and businesses who want to sabotage rivals.
The fake Amazon reviews are part of a much bigger problem, sparking fears that consumer spending of £23billion a year is being rigged by sellers paying for bogus endorsements. The Competition and Markets Authority has launched an investigation into concerns that families are being misled by reviews of everything from holidays to home improvements and gadgets.
It is also looking into claims that reviews on sites such as TripAdvisor are being manipulated. The problem of fake Amazon reviews was highlighted by The Sunday Times, which published a ghostwritten e-book called Everything Bonsai! on the site.
It was written over a weekend and was strewn with errors but fake reviewers hired for a total of £56 drove it to the top of the gardening and horticulture bestsellers category on Amazon UK’s Kindle store.
Four reviewers used their networks of multiple fake identities to download Everything Bonsai! more than 200 times in five days by exploiting Amazon’s free promotions. They then posted four and five-star recommendations.
One US-based reviewer, who claims to be in control of more than 70 accounts in the UK, America and Canada, sold positive book reviews to an undercover reporter for £3.26 each. The fake reviewer used accounts under the names of Sophie Tiernan, Liz Redmond and Charley Duffy, a group of 15-year-old school friends from Middlesbrough. They had no idea that their profiles, including photographs, had been lifted from Facebook.
In addition to e-books, the fake reviewer also used the girls’ identities to review products including beard growth supplements, a rectal digital thermometer and a colonic cleansing treatment.
Gill Tiernan, Sophie’s mother, said her daughter was ‘petrified’ to learn her profile had been used, and has lodged a complaint with Amazon.
She said: ‘This is completely disgusting. These girls are all friends so this person must have gone through their Facebook profiles to steal their details.
‘This site needs to have checks in place to verify that the people placing reviews are who they say they are.’
Another dealer in fake reviews, who posts under the name ‘Amazon Star’, used their network to write a series of negative reviews for an e-book after being hired to sabotage a competitor.
The reviewer, who charges around £4.50 for a positive review and £6.50 for a negative one, did not respond to requests for a comment about their activities.
Amazon said: ‘We use a number of mechanisms to detect and remove the small fraction of reviews that violate our guidelines, close abusive accounts, and in some cases take legal action. The specific accounts in question have been closed.’ – Daily Mail