We did the test: getting false positive reviews is a piece of cake

It seems to be one of the best tips to know whether an unknown webshop is reliable or not: check the reviews. But that is increasingly less the case. Google alone took no less than 170 million fake reviews offline last year. And they certainly didn’t track everything down, because we noticed how easy it is to praise a non-existent company with fake reviews.

Two attempts. We didn’t need more. First we launched Airbakestar: a bakery of cupcakes and especially hot air with a pretty good-looking site that cost us barely ten euros for the domain name. But we wanted too much, too fast and too easy. To be able to post a review of a site on Google, you must be registered as a company there. We were refused. A company without a physical address and telephone number arouses suspicion. Google did give us the option to appeal via email using energy invoices or tax certificates: and indeed, anyone who really exists has that. But forging those documents was not an option for us.

Attempt two

So it’s time to put in a little more – but not much – effort. We decide to sell something different: laser engraved gifts for retirement celebrations, weddings, wedding photos… B.Lasered was born, headed by ourselves under the names Edwin Schaffelare and Danny Depuydt. We link the address of the newspaper and an existing mobile number to our company. Our site? Nothing more than one page on which we say what we do and where you can request a quote without obligation. For the rest, another completely empty box.

Five minutes. That’s how long it will take before we get a go from Google. This time no questions about invoices, company number or anything to prove that we exist. With the help of our address and mobile number, we slip through the not-so-fine mesh of their net. After that it goes smoothly. With Google’s approval, they at Trustpilot have blind faith in us. In no time we will also be shining on that site, with even the words ‘verified company’. In a green bar with a green check mark next to it. If that doesn’t inspire confidence among potential buyers.

We exist. But can we now also link reviews to it? Praising words about a company that isn’t real? We ask twenty colleagues if they wanted to write a review and provide them with a list of how many stars they should give, when that should happen – everything in one day is suspect – and also what exactly they should post.

Because if you want to appear real, you have to do it right. Enter Ana Isabel Lopes from the Department of Communication Sciences at the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam. She conducts research into how people create an image of a company based on reviews. “Just messages with ‘nice work’, ‘well done’ or ‘satisfied with’ do not inspire much confidence,” she says. “People attach most value to reviews that tell something more. They want details and that also increases trust: because these are things you cannot know if you are not a customer.”

So we let colleagues write posts about gifts for pensions, glass balls with the galaxy engraved on them, and how “a certain Edwin was so thoughtful to include a card saying congratulations on the baby” with an order for a birth. In addition, Lopes advises us not to just go for good reviews. Because this not only causes suspicion among potential customers – there is no such thing as perfection – but also among algorithms that detect fake reviews.

In just two weeks, we create an image that we would like to have ourselves: a score of 4.5 out of 5 on Google and on Trustpilot we boast a 4.2 out of 5. At no time is even one review was refused or questioned. Only when we inform Trustpilot about our project do our writers suddenly receive an email that fraud detection software reported their fake review. Before that, the software didn’t notice anything.

Buy reviews

Time to step it up a notch and try something you can also do if you cannot or do not want to engage twenty colleagues: buy good reviews. It goes against the rules of Google and co., but there are still companies that offer such a service. “100 for 499 euros,” we read on one site. On another similar site – Weecqfy.com – we find the option to request a free trial review. The free choice seems safer than simply donating the number of our Visa card. We enter the name of our site and the review we want to see appear. That same day, a young lady we don’t know very well literally posts our words, including five stars. Google clearly trusts her.

The company tells us in a response that what they are doing is not illegal, but that is not true. The website of the FPS Economy clearly states that writing false reviews is prohibited. “Companies that sell such assessments are often located abroad,” the FPS said. “Which makes it difficult for us to take action.”

Fraudsters

So we apologize for briefly appealing to illegality. But otherwise we kept it good. We didn’t really mislead people, didn’t sell anyone too much air. Although the conclusion remains bitter. We created a good appearance online with good scores quite easily – a few hours of work and a budget of around ten euros. And police services are quite concerned about that convenience. What we did is increasingly being abused by fraudsters.

“A good review is often the last trigger people need to order somewhere online,” says Gijs van der Linden, team leader of the Dutch National Internet Fraud Hotline. “Fraudsters take advantage of this.” Our FPS Economy also warns against this practice. “How do they do it?”, says Van der Linden. “They indeed often work with real accounts because they are more difficult to trace. Even worse, they even use their own victims for this. Then you shouldn’t buy reviews or recruit them from friends. For example, there is now a study in which people who ordered something supposedly received a discount if they immediately posted a positive review. Those people paid for their order, did not receive anything delivered to their home, but had posted online that it was a good company. Even before they realized that it was not the case, they unknowingly convinced other victims with their good review. Sooner or later there will of course be reviews from dissatisfied customers, but by then the damage has already been done.”

“We have files with hundreds of victims who lost an average of 350 euros to fake electrical stores,” says Van der Linden. “And it doesn’t cost the criminals much money. As you say, you can easily create a site. You did not link a webshop to it, but there are tools with which you can do that in no time and the money crosses the border via foreign payment systems. Sometimes we can stop it, but when it is directly converted into crypto coins, it is more difficult.”

Whether platforms can or should no longer do anything about fake reviews? “Work has recently been done on this,” says Mathias Vermeulen, director at law firm AWO, which specializes in digital consumer law. “The Digital Services Act (DSA) has been in force within the EU since February. The principle is that the larger companies are, the more efforts they must make to protect consumers, for example by taking action against fake reviews. We will never be able to keep out all fake reviews. But the fact that you can simply register a non-existent company on Google without being asked for something as simple as a company number shows that improvements are possible.”