Cornell Software Fingers Fake Online Reviews

Eric Smalley writes "If you're like most people, you give yourself high ratings when it comes to figuring out when someone's trying to con you. Problem is, most people aren't actually good at it — at least as far as detecting fake positive consumer reviews. Fortunately, technology is poised to make up for this all-too-human failing. Cornell University researchers have developed software that they say can detect fake reviews (PDF)."

Re:read negative ones?

[PopeRatzo]

What about fake reviews that are posted by the competition. I have a hard time believing that anybody that is posting fake reviews of their products isn't doing that for their competition as well.

That's why I appreciate Amazon's "verified purchaser" or whatever it's called. When a review is posted by someone who actually bought the product from Amazon, it shows up beneath the title of the review. By only looking at those, I'm able to eliminate a lot of the junk reviews. Now, nothing stops the competition from actually buying the product and then trashing it, but I can also look up other reviews by that reviewer. This gives me very good insight into the way that person thinks.

I suppose nothing stops a phony from creating an Amazon review, buying a bunch of products and then buying the product he intends to trash with a bad review. But I figure that's not really likely. And I could probably figure it out by reading their previous reviews anyway.