Are fake reviews illegal?

It has been reported by the International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition that in the past five years, there have been a series of highly publicized cases in which individuals were arrested and even imprisoned for providing bogus reviews on Amazon.

In one example, a man in Texas was sentenced to 10 years in prison after being found guilty of using a credit card stolen from his mother and making several hundred dollars by using the stolen credit card to purchase counterfeit goods from Amazon and posting fake reviews on Amazon. However, it seems that the law does not treat reviews posted by people on ebay or other marketplaces the same as reviews posted by regular people on Amazon. According to Amazon's own policies, sellers are not allowed to sell or offer any form of payment for reviews: Sellers should not ask buyers to review products or offer compensation in exchange for a positive review. How do you know if a product review is fake? On Amazon, reviews are categorized as helpful (good) or not helpful (bad). However, the FTC maintains that this system is too easy to game, and in their guidelines for the Honest Product Reviews Act they state that The FTC will also be looking for examples of review manipulation, which includes deceptive practices such as paid reviews, fake reviews, and reviews written by friends or family of the products' owners or manufacturers. The consumer posts a review praising the product, and receives the gift card.

A consumer who owns a smartphone buys the same product from a competing online retailer, then writes a negative review on Amazon. The reviewer promises to keep the product for free if the retailer purchases the same product. The retailer buys the same product from the competitor and receives the free product.

What happens if you fake reviews?

It can ruin your life.

He built an eight-figure business, says his father. He was working for a big e-commerce company as a content creator. Then, all of a sudden, it fell apart. They shut down the website.

Jonathan Ferrell's online reputation has been destroyed, but he is fighting back. He hired a ghostwriter to pen fake reviews for his business, even though they were obviously fake. The writer claimed that she had spent months writing the posts. The goal was to make it seem like an actual customer had been satisfied.

The problem is, according to the FTC, those reviews were completely fake. The writer was in fact not a customer. She had no relationship with the businesses. Ferrell hired her through a website called Fiverr.

According to the FTC, Ferrell broke the law by paying people to write fake reviews. It's not only illegal, it's unethical and immoral, says Michael Linch, a lawyer who specializes internet marketing. He did it to get people to believe his reviews were real, says the father. They weren't.

It's not just Ferrell. A search of Google for reviews of businesses that were paid for shows dozens of companies that have been doing the same thing.

It's one of the most deceptive practices in the online world, says Linch. Ferrell says he's not worried about legal action. He claims to have already reached a settlement with the FTC.

There's nothing that I'm worried about, says Ferrell. I'm not going to have to do anything. There was a resolution. It was a lot of money.

Ferrell didn't have to admit any wrongdoing or apologize, but his website and others like it will be required to change how they write their reviews.