A new investigation has revealed that Google Play and the App Store attract fake reviews that tarnish the popularity of apps.
As many as a quarter of reviews in the health and fitness section of the Google Play store were suspicious, while 17% of Apple Appearances appeared to be fake.
Consumer group analysis reveals "Which?" Millions of consumers may unintentionally hand over their personal data or money to apps that have deceived them to rank higher in the two mobile app stores.
and discover "Which?" Fake reviews are sold openly by moderators, who pay Google to appear at the top of their search results.
These services provide bulk downloads, reviews or upvotes to help push apps up the rankings, making them seem more popular if they've been downloaded a large number of times.
One fake review broker site, reviewlancer, claims to have sold approximately 53,000 reviews and exchanged more than 130,000 reviews.
Another - AppSally - provides manipulation review to several platforms and has previously appeared in fake review investigations, while there are also review trading groups on Facebook.
The researchers of "Which?" By analyzing nearly 900,000 reviews across the App store and Google Play between December 2022 and January 2023.
They also pretended to be developers looking for fake reviews of an app, and were approached by several users who submitted reviews for £1.70.
and devised "Which?" A model that relies on four red flags - a higher number of positive reviews, review "spikes" over a short period of time, reviews that are short in length, and high objectivity in 5-star reviews.
The analysis revealed that apps on Google Play that use paid reviews got a much higher percentage of five-star reviews - 60.5% in the case of a single dating app, compared to 9.7% for market leader Tinder.
For the health app, five-star ratings accounted for 45.8% of the reviews, while Garmin - which makes fitness trackers - had just 6%.
The research also showed that one in five apps (22%) in the Google Play Games category raised all four red flags for suspicious reviews.
And one in seven (15%) was the equivalent of Apple.
"Which?" Another red flag is the apparent crowd uploads of reviews, where clusters of four- and five-star feedback appear over the course of a few days, before another spike appears a few weeks or months later.
The researchers said this indicates the app uses a review medium.
In comparison, reviews on well-known apps have been found to be pouring in constantly.
The consumer group recommends that customers sort reviews through a variety of methods rather than just help or convenience to avoid manipulating results.
It also indicates that people should be wary of a large number of five-star reviews.
Apple said that developers who tried to cheat the system could have their apps removed.
Google did not comment on the analysis but said it had taken appropriate action against review brokers who used its search engine.
Source: Daily Mail