Approximately one in four apps in the Google Play Store (GOOG) has a suspicious rating, and in Apple’s App Store (AAPL) this figure is as high as one in six.
According to Which?, neither the Apple App Store nor Google Play are able to prevent fake and suspicious reviews from entering their platforms.
The consumer organization has conducted a large-scale analysis that suggests millions of consumers may be unknowingly giving their personal information or money to apps that have used fake reviews to get to the top of the world’s two most important app stores.
Which? first came across apps with fake five-star reviews after a simple Google search revealed a number of companies offering app store review services. Some even pay Google to appear as promoted companies at the top of search results while selling fake reviews for apps on Google’s own store.
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App review broker services offer bulk downloads, ratings or upvotes to help apps move up the rankings. Apps appear more reputable when they have been downloaded frequently. At the same time, upvotes manipulate what app store users see – reviews are automatically sorted by “helpful” or “relevance” so that reviews with the most upvotes are shown first. This allows developers to surface positive reviews and hide negative ones.
One fake review broker site, Reviewlancer, claims to have sold nearly 53,000 reviews and swapped more than 130,000 reviews between apps, and another, AppSally, offers review manipulation for many platforms and has featured in previous Which? investigations into fake reviews.
Rocio Concha, director of policy and advocacy at Which?, said: “Apple and Google are failing to prevent fake and suspect reviews from entering their app stores, leaving consumers at huge risk of being tricked into downloading apps that have been hyped up using unscrupulous tactics.”
In the Google Play Store, a quarter (25%) of apps in the Health and Fitness category and one in five (22%) apps in the Games category triggered all four warning signals for suspicious reviews.
In the Apple App Store, one in six (17%) apps in the Health and Fitness category and one in seven (15%) apps in the Games category triggered four of the suspicious review warning signals.
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Another warning sign is obvious mass uploads of reviews. Which? found that there were clusters of four and five star reviews within a few days, then very few for weeks or months before rising again. These spikes are likely to coincide with the hiring of a review broker. On the well-known apps, reviews came in steadily, with very few large spikes in activity.
Which? also looked at the length of reviews. Five-star reviews on the dating app that showed signs of suspicious activity were on average less than 20 characters long, significantly shorter than the app’s one- or two-star reviews. On Tinder, five-star reviews were closer to 150 characters long.
The government is expected to introduce reforms to tackle fake reviews through its Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act.
Concha said: “Our latest findings highlight why the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumer Bill is so urgently needed to combat fake reviews and the dominance of tech giants, and finally bring consumer protection laws into line with the digital age.”
Apple stated that submitting fraudulent reviews is a violation of the Apple Developer Program license agreement and that developers who attempt to cheat the system may have their apps removed.
The company added that in 2021, it systematically identified and excluded over 94 million reviews and over 170 million ratings from publication for not meeting moderation standards. An additional 610,000 reviews were removed after publication due to customer complaints and additional human review.
Which? has informed Google of its findings. The company told Which? that it would not comment on the reviews unless it was provided with all of Which?’s underlying research.
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