Amazon is making progress in its ongoing battle to eliminate fake product reviews.
The company said today that via litigation, it has obtained information about the financial transactions of websites that sell fraudulent praise and will use the intel to help weed out and penalize sellers that try to purchase bogus reviews.
In April, Amazon filed lawsuits against the alleged operators of “Amazon Verified Reviews,” “Buy Amazon Reviews,” “Paid Book Reviews,” and other similar sites. It also targeted Amazon.com sellers that bought fake reviews to promote their products.
“We have obtained full cooperation from one of the sellers, who has provided valuable information on methods they used to obtain fake reviews,” said an Amazon spokesperson. “We expect to resolve that case soon, and are continuing to pursue the other two sellers aggressively.”
Amazon began cracking down on fake reviews in early 2015, targeting websites and individuals selling reviews on Fiverr.com, an online marketplace. The company has filed suit against more than 1,000 defendants since the beginning of 2015 and said today that it has identified “hundreds of people who were offering to write fake reviews in exchange for payment on Fiverr.com, and have banned them from posting Amazon reviews.”
The company sees fake reviews as a real threat, with the power to “undermine the trust” Amazon has built with customers, “thereby tarnishing Amazon’s brand,” according to one of the lawsuits.
“Amazon takes the credibility of its customer reviews very seriously and we will continue to use a number of mechanisms to detect and remove the small fraction of reviews that violate our guidelines,” an Amazon representative said.
