Amazon Fake Products and Fake Reviews 240
rsk writes "The first time I came across fake reviews on Amazon, it was hilarious. Using Amazon's Window Shop app, I came across a great category, 'Peculiar Products,' and was more than happy to look through it. Almost every one of the products I found on the list (Uranium Ore, 1 Gallon of Milk, Parent Child Test, Fresh Whole Rabbit) were fake, with thousands of reviews on them. As a shopper, I wasn't aware of how easy it was to apparently fake product reviews and it bothers me. When I'm shopping, the first (and a lot of times only) place I visit is Amazon to read the reviews if I'm in the market for something. I don't expect the reviews to be the word of God, but I do assume a certain level of legitimacy for most of them. While this won't affect my use of Amazon (especially not at this time of the year) I would like to bubble this up to Amazon's attention so some time is spent on improving the quality of the reviews."
"Verified Purchase" (Score:5, Informative)
This exists! It's called Amazon Verified Purchase [amazon.com]. See, for example:
http://www.amazon.com/review/R23WKI375G1JJM [amazon.com]
I don't know if their ranking algorithm rates reviews from verified purchases higher or not, but wouldn't be surprised...
Google Places has similar problems (Score:4, Informative)
Since the big October 27, 2010 change to Google search, in which "places" results appeared at the top of web search, reviews have become much more important. Google's web search was mostly based on links, but Google Places is heavily driven by reviews. For a local business, there typically are few reviewers, so spamming reviews is far more effective than creating link farms.
Google is not too good at filtering out phony businesses, either. See "Dominating Google Maps- The Most Effective Spam Ever And What You Can Learn From It" [convertoffline.com], from an aggressive search engine optimization firm. That's an outright scam that fools Google easily.
Over on Bing, it's even worse. Search Bing for "New York City Locksmith". All 5 of the Bing locations listed are the same company, and they don't really have all those locations.
Re:Except it happens with real products too (Score:4, Informative)
It's OK to buy and own non-depleted uranium too, actually. Very small quantities are bought all the time for wide-ranging projects like Geiger counter calibration, and school science labs.
The amount in the canister on Amazon (which I do not actually believe is fake) is not enough to do anything dangerous with, even if you bought a whole bunch of canisters. You'd have to pretty much spend a sizable fortune to get enough to make even a very small nuclear reactor, and if you were trying to make a nuclear bomb you'd have to buy even more, and that's assuming you had the equipment and knowhow to make weapons-grade fissile material out of it.
It always amazes me how many people have such "OMG! NUKYEWLUR!" reactions to things like this. They must not know that glow-in-the-dark watches and gun sights are radioactive (tritium, which is also used to make weapons and yet civilians can get hold of it by buying a Luminox watch). Hell, pacemakers used to be powered by plutonium until Li-Ion batteries came along.
Nuclear is no big deal in the amounts sold to the general public.
Re:Steering Wheel tray (Score:2, Informative)
Behold the mighty Google link!
http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://jerksinyourarea.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/AutoExec-WM-01-Wheelmate-Steering-Wheel-Desk-Tray-Gray-.jpeg&imgrefurl=http://jerksinyourarea.com/&usg=__o1FaLlI3aEI8GvwUhBMpppBEjaw=&h=300&w=300&sz=13&hl=en&start=0&sig2=r1w01H5w_1rPrQoUwdoRBQ&zoom=1&tbnid=TqNLsEuQjgzBjM:&tbnh=149&tbnw=148&ei=-TIBTZy_F4u3hAfjkYjuBw&prev=/images%3Fq%3DAutoExec%2B-%2BWM-01%2B-%2BWheelmate%2BSteering%2BWheel%2BDesk%2BTray%2B-%2BGray%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26sa%3DN%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-GB:official%26biw%3D1440%26bih%3D770%26tbs%3Disch:1&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=130&vpy=69&dur=703&hovh=225&hovw=225&tx=108&ty=135&oei=-TIBTZy_F4u3hAfjkYjuBw&esq=1&page=1&ndsp=28&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:0 [google.co.uk]
Re:How easy it was to apparently fake product revi (Score:4, Informative)
Even more shocking is how easy it is to fake penthouse letters.
A lot of people joke about this, but penthouse actually sends fact finders out to verify all penthouse letters. They talk to all the parties involved, and require a reenactment before publishing.