Amazon Targets Fake Review Fraudsters on Social Media
19.7.2022 07:00:00 EEST | Business Wire | Press release
Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) today filed legal action against the administrators of more than 10,000 Facebook groups that attempt to orchestrate fake reviews on Amazon in exchange for money or free products. These groups are set up to recruit individuals willing to post incentivized and misleading reviews on Amazon’s stores in the U.S., the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and Japan.
Amazon will use information discovered in this legal action to identify bad actors and remove fake reviews commissioned by these fraudsters that haven’t already been detected by Amazon’s advanced technology, expert investigators, and continuous monitoring.
“Our teams stop millions of suspicious reviews before they’re ever seen by customers, and this lawsuit goes a step further to uncover perpetrators operating on social media,” said Dharmesh Mehta, Amazon’s vice president of Selling Partner Services. “Proactive legal action targeting bad actors is one of many ways we protect customers by holding bad actors accountable.”
The fraudsters behind such groups solicit fake reviews for hundreds of products available for sale on Amazon, including car stereos and camera tripods. One of the groups identified in the lawsuit is “Amazon Product Review,” which had more than 43,000 members until Meta took down the group earlier this year. Amazon’s investigations revealed that the group’s administrators attempted to hide their activity and evade Facebook’s detection, in part by obfuscating letters from problematic phrases.
Amazon strictly prohibits fake reviews and has more than 12,000 employees around the world dedicated to protecting its stores from fraud and abuse, including fake reviews. A dedicated team investigates fake review schemes on social media sites, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter, and regularly reports the abusive groups to those companies. Since 2020, Amazon has reported more than 10,000 fake review groups to Meta. Of these, Meta has taken down more than half of the groups for policy violations and continues to investigate others.
Amazon was a pioneer of product reviews, having introduced them in 1995 to help customers make more informed shopping decisions. The company aims to ensure every review that appears in its stores is trustworthy and reflects an actual customer experience. Amazon’s expert investigators use industry-leading tools to detect and block fake reviews. As a result, Amazon proactively stopped more than 200 million suspected fake reviews in 2020 alone.
Today’s legal action is the latest step by Amazon aimed at stopping fraudsters who attempt to post fake reviews in Amazon’s stores. In the past year, legal action from Amazon has shut down multiple major review brokers targeting customers in the U.S., the UK, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain.
However, the nefarious business of brokering fake reviews remains an industry-wide problem, and civil litigation is only one step. Permanently ridding fake reviews across retail, travel, and other sectors will require greater public-private partnership, including collaboration between the affected companies, social media sites, and law enforcement, all focused on a goal of greater consumer protection. Amazon remains eager to continue to partner with all the relevant stakeholders to achieve that mutual goal.
About Amazon
Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Amazon strives to be Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company, Earth’s Best Employer, and Earth’s Safest Place to Work. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Career Choice, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, Alexa, Just Walk Out technology, Amazon Studios, and The Climate Pledge are some of the things pioneered by Amazon. For more information, visit amazon.com/about and follow @AmazonNews.
To view this piece of content from cts.businesswire.com, please give your consent at the top of this page.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220718005747/en/
Contact information
Amazon.com, Inc.
Media Hotline
Amazon-pr@amazon.com
www.amazon.com/pr
About Business Wire
For more than 50 years, Business Wire has been the global leader in press release distribution and regulatory disclosure.
Subscribe to releases from Business Wire
Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Latest releases from Business Wire
Verdict Expected Soon in Klarna’s $8.3 Billion Antitrust Lawsuit Against Google24.2.2026 20:09:00 EET | Press release
Klarna Group plc (NYSE: KLAR) announces that the Patent and Market Court of Sweden (Patent- och marknadsdomstolen) is expected to deliver its verdict on April 15, 2026 in the antitrust damages proceedings brought by Klarna’s subsidiary PriceRunner International AB against Google LLC and Google Ireland Limited. The trial, which ran from October 20 to December 19, 2025, concerned PriceRunner’s claim for approximately $8.3 billion in damages — the largest civil damages claim ever filed in a Swedish court. The Case The claim arises from Google’s abuse of dominance in online comparison shopping, as established by the European Commission in a binding 2017 decision and upheld without reservation by the Court of Justice of the European Union in September 2024. PriceRunner alleges that Google systematically demoted competing price comparison services in its search results while favouring its own Google Shopping product, causing sustained and quantifiable commercial damage to PriceRunner over mo
INRIX Announces New Generation of AI Traffic Products: Helping to Improve Safety, Reduce Congestion, and Enhance Mobility Operations24.2.2026 17:49:00 EET | Press release
INRIX, a global leader in transportation data and analytics, today announced a major expansion of its Trafficfamily of products, delivering innovativeAI-driven capabilities to help transportation agencies and logistics organizations move from reactive traffic management to proactive, safety-focused and efficient operations. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260224267928/en/ INRIX introduces expanded automation, generative AI capabilities, enhanced incident detection, and continuous analytics. Over twenty years ago, INRIX commercialized the first system to use GPS data to create real-time traffic information. In 2019, INRIX launched AI Traffic – the world's first traffic platform to leverage deep learning models and AI to improve the quality and analysis globally. Now, INRIX is launching a new generation of automation and intelligence to help agencies and enterprises move faster from analyzing data to making deci
Check Point and ControlPlane Partner to Help Enterprises Securely Scale AI and Accelerate Agentic Innovation24.2.2026 16:30:00 EET | Press release
ControlPlane, a specialist AI Security and DevSecOps consultancy, and Check Point Software Technologies Ltd., a pioneer and global leader in cyber security solutions, today announced a strategic collaboration to help enterprises securely adopt Large Language Models (LLMs) and agentic AI systems at scale. The partnership delivers a comprehensive, regulator-ready security framework designed to reduce risk, protect sensitive data, and enable organizations to move confidently from AI experimentation to production deployment. By combining Check Point’s AI-native threat prevention platform with ControlPlane’s deep expertise in cloud native architectures and DevSecOps, enterprises can operationalize AI securely without slowing innovation. As organizations advance AI initiatives beyond pilots, they face a growing “AI readiness gap.” Emerging threats such as prompt injection, unauthorized access, data leakage, and model misuse introduce risks that traditional security controls were not built to
Andersen Consulting Expands Capabilities with Assure Consulting24.2.2026 16:30:00 EET | Press release
Andersen Consulting strengthens its platform with addition of collaborating firm Assure Consulting, a Germany-based management consulting firm specializing in project management and project portfolio management. Founded in 2003, Assure Consulting supports organizations in successfully delivering complex projects and transformations. The firm helps clients establish and operate Project Management Offices (PMOs), strengthen governance and portfolio management, and apply classical, agile, or hybrid project management approaches tailored to their needs. Assure Consulting also provides hands-on support for large-scale system and process rollouts, integrated change management for organizational and cultural transformation, and coaching and training programs aligned with internationally recognized project management standards to build sustainable capabilities within client organizations. “This collaboration allows us to scale our project-delivery expertise and agile transformation capabilitie
Clinilabs Establishes EU Headquarters in Basel, Strengthening European Clinical Operations Under New Regional Leadership24.2.2026 16:00:00 EET | Press release
Clinilabs, a leading specialty contract research organization (CRO) focused on central nervous system (CNS) drug and device development, today announced the expansion of its European operations, including the establishment of its European Union headquarters at Switzerland Innovation Park Basel Area, and the appointment of Dr. Anne-Marie Nagy as executive vice president and head of Clinilabs Europe. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260224669284/en/ Dr. Anne-Marie Nagy appointed as Executive Vice President and Head of Clinilabs Europe Switzerland Innovation Park Basel Area is part of Switzerland’s national innovation network and located within the Basel region’s globally recognized life sciences cluster, bringing together biopharma companies, research institutions, and clinical innovation leaders. “Europe is a critical pillar of Clinilabs’ long-term growth strategy,” said Gary K. Zammit, Ph.D., president and chie
In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.
Visit our pressroom