Amazon Fake Reviews: THIS scam compromised personal details of 2 lakh users: Here’s how it unfolded

We often look for reviews of a particular product, we wish to buy from any ecommerce platform. Now, a new review scam has surfaced on Amazon and it is said to have affected more than 200,000 users.

According to a report by Apple Insider, the new data revealed by security researchers at SafetyDetectives via a China-based server revealed new data that reveals details about the scams and how it has affected so many users.  

The report further stated that the Amazon review section has been compromised and it is filled with fake reviews and testimonials for products for quite some time. Some of the products at Amazon are high rated and therefore, it shows on the top of the suggestions which further leads the customers to buy these products. Also, it is searched through the ‘User Rating’ filter.

It functions in a way that Amazon vendors send a list of products to reviewers that they want to get a high rating (usually a 5-star). Once the reviewers get the list, they buy those products and get a 5-star rating for it, further improving the product’s visibility and it becomes high on suggestions.

After the review on Amazon, the reviewer sends a message back to the vendor, which adds the link to Amazon profile and PayPal details, and then he gets the refund for the item purchased and also keeps the product. Few of them get extra cash rewards also, as per the report.

The security researchers found a database where more than 13 million records (7GB worth of data) were hosted without any password protection.  Also the database found by those researchers revealed personal details of vendors which include their emails, WhatsApp and Telegram phone numbers. This operation happened on March 1, 2021 and around 75,000 links to Amazon accounts along with PayPal account details and usernames were compromised.