Now bad reviews are becoming a cyber criminal’s choice of attack UPDATED 20 July 2022

Update 20 July 2022 – Amazon is taking positive action against fake reviews

I am sure you check the reviews on Amazon products before you buy, I know I do, and it has influenced my buying decisions more than once. So it is obviously important that these can be relied on. So when threat actors can have a huge impact on businesses performance with fake reviews something needs to be done.

Amazon is making some headway by going after those who have made a business out of fake reviews.

Amazon sues 10,000 Facebook Group admins over fake reviews • The Register

Here is the original post:

These may not be the cyber criminals on the scale of the ransomware gangs – but this is cyber extortion – pay up or we leave a bad review with Google!

‘Seventy-five dollars or your restaurant gets it!’ The blackmailers weaponising one-star reviews | Restaurants | The Guardian

Of course Google – one of the biggest tech companies in the world will be doing everything it can to to fix this problem and restore the credibility of their service.

What does Google think about this? “Our policies clearly state reviews must be based on real experiences,” said a spokesperson.

from The Guardian

So Google is not doing much then – except collecting on the advertising on the review pages – which only makes things easy for the cyber criminals and worse for the law abiding store owners.

Please Note:

I am on leave so the news this week is “in brief”. You can still contact me via the contact page and Octagon Technology.