The scenario is as follows: you want to take your crush to a trendy restaurant. You look for the one with the most positive reviews, almost a perfect five stars. You don’t hesitate and make your reservation. However, the experience is far from the adjective “pleasant”. The food arrives cold, the waiter has trouble turning his head, and you go home arguing about whether what ran between the tables was a cockroach or a mouse. This is your first experience with inflated bills.

When the rating of an establishment that should have a bad reputation is artificially inflated. And this is more common than you might think. Not only restaurants and stores inflate their ratings on apps, but the stores themselves aplicativos inflate their notes in stores.

How to spot fraud?

Malicious establishments and developers inflate their ratings with bots or “professional reviewers” ​​who are paid (very poorly) to give fake opinions. In the case of apps, there are also artificial downloads, increasing the number of installations in order to make the fake app appear popular and appear at the top of the search results.

 

Some fakes are easy to spot: reviews with no text or with repeated text, reviews that are too vague (for example: “I thought everything was divine” instead of “I ordered a ribeye steak and loved the seasoning”). And also reviews that receive a proportional number of votes, where this applies. Also note what the negative reviews say, buried among the positive ones: there, people report pure and simple fraud, including inflated ratings.

The main tip is: don't trust the rating and/or number of downloads, which is exactly what fraudsters can control. Go beyond reviews. Don't rely solely on one site, such as the Play Store, iFood or Trip Advisor. Search for other sites, scour social networks and forums, such as the manufacturer's own or Reddit. Google is your friend. And recommendations from friends are always welcome!

Google e Apple They do what they can, but it's a constant race against counterfeiters – particularly when what's being counterfeited isn't the app itself, which is detected when it's put online, but its quality, which comes from people: that's what inflated notes try to simulate.