Amazon shopping site not secure? 2 lakh people were deceived by buying products after seeing fake reviews
E-commerce shopping platform Amazon is new and there is no need to tell anyone. This American shopping site is surpassing others in terms of day-to-day popularity. Whenever we go to Amazon to buy something, we first look at the review section of our respective products. Depending on how other users have reviewed the product, many of us are considering buying the item. If there are mostly good reviews we buy the thing and if we see the worst reviews then we consider the product to be bad. But have we ever wondered if these reviews are real or fake? Yes, now is the time to think about them. Because a recent survey found that more than 200,000 users were affected by Amazon’s ‘fake’ reviews!
According to a report by Apple Insider, security researchers at SafetyDetectives have reviewed all of the scams from a server in China. As a result, Amazon’s review section has been plagued by bogus reviews for years. Several products have fake high ratings that encourage users to buy the item. Given the high rating, whenever someone searches based on the ‘User Rating’ filter, the names of the products with the corresponding fake rating automatically appear at the top of the suggestion list.
But how is this bogus high rating being given to the products? According to the report, Amazon vendors send a list of products to reviewers. These are all products on which they want a high quality (usually 5 stars) rating. These reviewers then buy the products and give them a 5-star rating. This makes the products move to the top of the suggestion list and floats more clearly in front of your eyes as you browse.
As soon as a review has been posted on Amazon, the reviewer sends a message to the respective vendor, which includes a link to the Amazon profile and PayPal details. The reviewer then gets a chance to get a refund for the purchased item as well as keep the product with him. Not only that, according to the report, some people also demanded extra cash for this.
On March 1, 2021, security researchers found a database with more than 13 million records (about 8 GB of data). The database included not only email addresses but also WhatsApp and Telegram phone numbers of vendors involved in the Amazon Review scandal. PayPal account details and usernames were also found, along with about 75,000 links to Amazon accounts. However, for the convenience of customers, it is not yet clear what steps Amazon will take to prevent this bogus review. Amazon shopping site is not safe? 2 lakh people were deceived by buying products after seeing fake reviews
