Bombarded with Spam Reviews

[Zombie Byte]

Our extension has been bombarded with spam reviews. We are a highly rated tool and all of a sudden in one day we are bombarded with a lot of 1 star review. All the review details are false, and the only intention seems to be to tank our tool. 

Has anyone else had this issue? What can we do about this? 

Please help. We had put in a lot of work with our tool and build a good reputation, and it is sad to see such bad actors trying to distroy it. 

[Zombie Byte]

So, to give an update to previous email. Some one reached out and started blackmailing us that if we use their service they can remove all the one star review. To prove the point they also put in another twenty 1-star review. Then offered to remove the review for some cash. Have given screenshot of the conversation below. 

We have stopped all conversation with them and dont plan to engage. Wanted to share this so others are aware.

Also wanted to check, what can we do about this? Is there anyway to report this and remove the fake reviews? This is affecting our reputation. Please help. 

[Uladzimir Yankovich]

I hope the Chrome team can give you a helping hand 🙏.

[Juraj M.]

This is a nice example of what will happen if you decide to pay for shady services to improve your rating. They use your money to maximize their income, now even with blackmail!

If there is no market, they will stop, so never ever give them any money!

And I really hope Google can allocate some of it's vast resources to battle this plague.

[hrg...@gmail.com]

This is a nice example of what will happen if you decide to pay for shady services to improve your rating.

Interesting. I hadn't heard of this scam before.

First you pay them to scam the system in your favor and then they use the same system to scam you in their favor. Brilliant!!

Dealing with criminals is never a good idea.

[Zombie Byte]

Hi everyone, 

To update, someone from the chrome team did reach out to us after this email, and we provided the details they required. Thank you for that. Hope the fake reviews will be removed soon. 

To clarify, we never ever even engaged with any review providers or any other similar service. This was out of the blue. We would also never pay as it only encourages these behaviours.  It seems that they were targeting a specific kind of extensions. It seems that one of our competitors was also targeted 2 days back from the same accounts. The fake review provided for them was also from the same accounts. 

Regards

 

[Juraj M.]

I didn't meant to say that you specifically payed them before :), I mean it in general. Those that support malicious companies can expect them to grow into something even worse.

[Zombie Byte]

To update to the extortion with spam review, we are still keeping on getting them every other day followed by a message offering to remove it for money. Another similar extension is also being bombarded like this. Our average review has gone from 4.9 to 3.2 something. Even after escalating with chrome store, no reviews have been removed after 5 days. 

Longer term, shouldn't Chrome Store have a better way to handle reviews? These people who are targeting us do not seem to be that sophisticated . They are just using bots to add like 20 review in 10 minutes using random text from somewhere. They are just trying to make some quick buck. Should there atleast be a CAPTCHA on the review form, maybe a little dialed up? This can also take care of the fake review services who usually uses bots. That itself will take care of the less sophisticated operations. And now that we are at it, shouldnt there be a CAPTCHA before viewing the chrome email too, like how we have with YouTube? Atleast lets add some friction.

Otherwise, is there a way to freeze the review section for apps that have been affected by these intentional fake reviews? Even after escalating after mentioning here, it is taking more than 5 days. So with a similar pace the people doing these kinds of things have a big advantage.  

I worry this will turn into a cottage industry. It is just too easy to hold an app to ransom, and even if a small set of people pay it is enough to sustain them. Not sure submitting a ticket and waiting by itself will solve this long term?

[Jackie Han]

Hi Zombie,

There was similar case like you: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/chromium-extensions/c/-VuAGxwZfTw/m/F_7T0iEkAAAJ

I see that issue has now been resolved and the 1-star reviews were eventually deleted. So please wait a little longer.

Also, could you share your extension link? Let other developers keep an eye on it.

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[Zombie Byte]

Update: Seems Google has removed all the fake reviews now. Want to thank the Google team for doing this promptly. 

Hope the spammers don't come back and continue doing the same thing.

Thank you everyone.

[Justin Silverman]

Has anyone else run into this issue recently and have a way to fix it? About a month ago my then 4.9/5 star rated Chrome extension with 10,000 users got flooded with 25 1-star reviews, mostly within a few minutes of each other, all saying completely off-topic things. When trying to figure out what happened and why someone would do this, I spotted an email in my inbox saying they can help me remove these reviews from my profile for a fee. They admitted in email that they were the ones that left the negative reviews, and took one down as a way to prove they could do that if I paid them. I have all the evidence saved. Has anyone had luck getting these types of spam/ransom attacker's reviews taken down? They drove my rating down to a 4.1 and it's really hurting my business and my team's spirits since they really took pride in our great ratings.

Thanks so much in advance to anyone who can give me some hope here!

- Justin

[Patrick Kettner]

Hey Justin!

Sorry to hear that - can you share the extension ID? I can make sure it is investigated straight away.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/chromium-extensions/f7b5557e-099f-4dcf-8db2-1678a1075070n%40chromium.org.

[Justin Silverman]

Thank you for the incredibly fast reply, Patrick! Here's our ID: gllhamnkpecmfhgdbildlgbbopofnnoe

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/profilepro-ai-seo-tool-fo/gllhamnkpecmfhgdbildlgbbopofnnoe

Please let me know if there's anything else I can provide to make this easier for you.

Cheers,

Justin

[Patrick Kettner]

I've escalated with the review team, they will take action asap.

best

patrick

[Zombie Byte]

Hi Patrick, 

This seem to be the same people who left the fake reviews for us. The date seems to match and the user accounts are the same. 

In our case, it is a month exactly after starting this post and still some of the fake reviews are not removed even after escalating. Can you help again to look into our issue, this is our initial ticket number: 0-1465000035551. All reviews on Feb 28th (all 8) we have on our tool are fake. You will infact find that some of the accounts from which we got fake reviews are same as what Justin has on his chrome account. 

This has been affecting us a lot, would be very thankful if you can help us both at a very higher priority. It is already taking too long.

Regards

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[Justin Silverman]

Hi Patrick, we haven't heard anything yet and these fake reviews have crushed our signup rate. The spammers took us down from a 4.9/5 to a 3.7/5. Any idea what else can be done here?

Thanks so much in advance.

Very best,

Justin

[Dror Z]

Hi Patrick 

I saw that you helped someone with the process of removing SPAM reviews from their extension.

While my issue is not at all as bad, I did get what I would describe SPAM / Fake review on my extension. They just gave a 1 star for no reason and didn't leave any comments. 

What's the process for escalating or removing such reviews?  Is there a form or a review process I can go through? 

Thanks in advance for all your help. 

[Zakaria Kasmi]

Hi Patrick, I saw your comment and really appreciate you escalating things for others. Would it be possible for you to look into our case as well? We’ve been dealing with a wave of fake reviews on our Chrome extension, and despite reaching out to support multiple times and providing all the necessary documentation, we haven’t received any response or seen any action for months.

We’d be truly grateful if you could help escalate this, it's having a serious impact on our extension and users.

Case ID 3-9784000038323

[Cuyler Stuwe]

People almost never leave reviews on Chrome extensions, even for large ones with millions of users.

It seems to me that it would be a simple common-sense adjustment to hold all comments for review whenever there is a sudden surge, and deem any large surge like this as "suspicious" by default.

The potential harm of this kind of "review bomb fraud" is very severe compared to the minor inconvenience of delayed reviews.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/chromium-extensions/7757a273-3d8d-47d6-bcc2-f2bb4877aacen%40chromium.org.

[Zakaria Kasmi]

You're absolutely right — organic reviews on Chrome extensions are rare, even for those with millions of users. So when there's a sudden flood of 1-star reviews, it's a clear red flag. Temporarily holding or reviewing such spikes seems like a simple, common-sense safeguard. we personally watched our extension’s rating drop from 4.8 to 1.8 almost overnight. What’s worse is that we’ve been trying to reach Google support for nearly 5 months. They responded once after 4 months and removed a few fake reviews, but since then, we've submitted multiple tickets and sent dozens of emails — and received nothing but silence.

It's genuinely frustrating and disheartening for developers who put so much effort into building high-quality tools.