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INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) – Online reviews are gaining in popularity, but users may not always be getting the truth when they click on a link.

24-Hour News 8 investigated an underground economy where people are paying for online reviews.

Indiana University researchers Minaxi Gupta and Robert Hoyle recently conducted a study on fraudulent reviews.

“There is a whole economy behind writing fraudulent reviews, and people paying these review writers,” explained Gupta, an assistant professor of computer science.

The researchers pointed out a website called fiverr.com , where everything sells for five dollars: including fraudulent reviews.

One post says, “I will buy your Amazon product and write your review for five dollars.”

Another states, “I will do post two nice and attractive Amazon reviews.”

For their study, Gupta and Hoyle bought 55 reviews for different products they found on Amazon.

“We took all their fraudulent reviews, and then we studied their characteristics,” explained Gupta.

They found the people who were writing the reviews for money were from all over the world: from the U.S, to Ireland, to India, to Bangladesh.

“In general, it is getting harder to distinguish good from the bad on the web,” said Gupta.

They say there are clues to help consumers understand what’s real and what’s fake.

Gupta and Hoyle recommend looking on Amazon for a label on reviews: “Amazon Verified Product.” That means the reviewer actually bought the product, and the review is more likely real.

They recommend looking at what else the reviewer has written. Hoyle found one reviewer copy and pasted the same review on multiple CDs.

Another potential warning sign: If a reviewer gives all five-star reviews within a short period of time. They may be getting paid to post positive reviews.

“You have to use a lot more judgment, and increasingly the notion of reputation will become more and more important,” said Gupta. “We are starting to see this.”

In Gupta and Hoyle’s study, they estimate 257,000 reviews on Amazon (or about 1 percent) are fraudulent. Their goal long-term is to develop a program to entirely eliminate fake reviews.

Researchers at Cornell University recently published a paper on their research that created a computer program to find fake reviewers. Click here to see that paper.

Rob Slaven reviews books — not for the money, but for the love of reading. He gets to keep every book he reviews.

“The books I’ve reviewed, I’ve tried to be devastatingly honest,” said Slaven.

If you look at all of his reviews, you’ll see a line he adds, disclosing he got the book for doing the review. He also gets feedback — positive and negative — for each review he posts.

He knows not everyone is as honest as he is, but says he’ll keep up his side of the bargain.

“I’m not going to say something that’s not true,” explained Slaven. “It would be me misleading people. Me, misleading people like me.”

Review sites say they’re fighting fraud. Yelp representatives say they’ve always had a review filter to keep fake content out. They also recently started posting a giant red “consumer alert” sign on businesses that tried to mislead people. Amazon also has a flagging system.

But, researchers say not all fake reviews are caught. It’s a disappointing, but not surprising, revelation for honest reviewers.

“Customers go on Amazon in order to get trustworthy reviews, and to get candid opinions,” said Slaven.

Federal Trade Commission spokeswoman Betsy Lordan tells 24-Hour News 8 that paying for online reviews is legal,  as long as the reviewer explains they’ve been compensated.

Of course, with the reviews 24-Hour News 8 discovered, there’s been no disclosure.

Lordan says that means the advertiser isn’t complying with federal advertising law, and could face charges from the FTC. The charges would be civil, so they would face a fine or bans against certain online behavior. Click on this example to see what happened to one company that used its employees to write reviews.

http://www.wishtv.com/dpp/news/indiana/whats-the-truth-the-money-behind-online-reviews