Proactively handling fake reviews / fake users

[Juraj M.]

Would you kindly order this man services for some "testing extension" and then ban all the users that installed / rated it to prevent further damage for the ecosystem?

Imagine how much safer the Webstore would be if one could trust the users count and reviews!

[Juraj M.]

More spam came today.

Anyone any feedback, opinions, brainstorming...?

I hate to see this injustice and not being able to do anything about it.

[hrg...@gmail.com]

This is a general problem on all platforms (Youtube, Twitter, TikTok, Facebook, etc.). There's no way to solve it because human behavior under a given context is easy to fake (either by other humans or by software). So, it's not possible to tell apart genuine user activity from fabricated one.

In the end, this is really a societal problem, not a technology problem. It's like trying to solve delinquency of drug trafficking. You can fight the problem all you want, but it won't go away. We have no choice but to learn to live with it.

[Andreas Reinhold (surtic86)]

Yes really annoying.

Especially since he did just pushed 4 reviews (who are really fake looking) on my Extension to show how good he is.... thats really sucks

[Simeon Velichkov]

I'm pretty sure the CWS is full of fake reviews and ratings. TBH I'm thinking of paying for some ratings at least (maybe). The rating system is really flawed, and I guess that's the case in any other platform, but one negative (1 star) reviews weights way more than a 5 start one. You can do the math but you need lots of 5 starts to counter a single 1 star review and I'm really tired of people leaving 1 star with something along the lines of:

a) it doesn't work - despite all of the documentation and screencasts

b) complaining about feature that is not in the extension that was never advertised in the extension description

c) simply leaving 1 star without saying anything

So I might as well use the services of some of these 'marketing gurus' and whatnot as I really don't like the idea of nagging to my users to leave a review (in the extension maybe).

[Simeon Velichkov]

And the only 5 star 'reviews' that I get are these:

But ironically this will be the only one removed by the system too ..

[hrg...@gmail.com]

The user removes the review themselves right after posting it. Their goal is that you receive the email notification that's sent to the developer's inbox.

[Simeon Velichkov]

TBH I'm not getting that, I know we have discussed this in another thread too, but my point is that I am getting those emails directly on my 'support' email, so what's the point in sending me a review? Maybe because I did not respond and they are trying my main developer email instead .. ok, now I get it. But I think the CWS will be deleting those types of reviews automatically.

[Zakaria Kasmi]

Does anyone have a solution for a fake reviews attack? We're receiving dozens of fake 1-star reviews on our extension from a competitor, and it's really frustrating. I would greatly appreciate any help. I've tried contacting Google multiple times, but haven't received any response.