Amazon sues users who posted fake reviews for a fee

Amazon has sued users who posted fake reviews on its site. Because it has no idea who the people were who made the fake reviews, the web store has sued 1114 ‘john does’.

The indictment concerns sellers on the website Fiverr, on which people can offer services for amounts from five dollars. Some users then offered to publish reviews on Amazon, among others, with a hundred different accounts in order to raise the product rating. That is prohibited under Amazon’s terms and conditions. Because Fiverr prohibits users from offering services that go against the terms of other services, it’s not allowed on that site either, Techcrunch says.

It concerns a total of 1114 people, but Amazon doesn’t know who they are, so it has charged a ‘john doe’ 1114 times, the default name used if the identity is not known. Amazon removes accounts with which fake reviews have been posted, including accounts of people named in the indictment.

Earlier this year, the web store also took action against fake reviews. That action was aimed at operators of websites that were aimed at selling fake reviews.