Apple App store and Google Play flooded with fake reviews
Apple's App Store and Google Play are failing to filter out fake and suspicious reviews from their platforms, a large scale analysis by Which? has found.
Using a unique model for classifying suspicious review activity on apps, we found as many as 25% of the top 100 apps on Google Play in certain popular categories have suspicious reviews, while in Apple's App Store this figure was 17%.
Over the years we’ve exposed fake reviews on a variety of platforms, for both products and businesses. So it might not come as a surprise that there’s a thriving business for fake reviews on app stores, too. Our latest research reveals the scale of the issue.
Find out how to spot a fake review with our in-depth guide.
Dodgy apps on Apple and Google app stores
We conducted a large-scale analysis of the reviews on apps we knew had paid for fake five star reviews, looking at the data for more than 18,000 reviews.
Benchmarking the dodgy apps we’d uncovered against well-known and trusted apps in the same category, we then compared the behaviour of reviewers to create a model for estimating the amount of suspicious activity across apps.
We found stark differences in review patterns.
- Five stars – apps using paid for reviews had a significantly higher proportion of five star reviews – 60.5% of reviews for the dating app were five stars, compared to just 9.7% for Tinder. For the health app, five star reviews accounted for 45.8% of reviews, while Garmin had just 6%. This pattern is typical wherever you find review manipulation.
- Bulk uploads – we noted clusters of four and five star reviews over a few days for the apps we knew were buying reviews, then very few reviews for weeks or months before another big spike – likely coinciding with the app employing a review broker. On the well-known apps we looked at, reviews trickled in consistently with very few big spikes in activity.
- Length of reviews – the five star reviews on the dodgy dating app were less than 20 characters on average, and were significantly shorter than the app’s one or two star reviews. For Tinder, five star reviews were closer to 150 characters on average.
We also conducted an analysis of the content of the reviews using sentiment analysis, a widely used method for determining the subjectivity of a review. We found that apps that had engaged in fake review activity had a higher proportion of subjective five star reviews than one star reviews - for example a five star review would read ‘best app ever’. In our benchmarked apps, subjectivity was similar across star ratings.
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How many apps have suspicious reviews?
We applied our model to the top 100 apps in the health and fitness and gaming apps categories on Google Play and the Apple App Store, analysing a total of 900,000 reviews.
Across both app stores, we found that 21% of top 100 health & fitness apps had suspicious reviews – based on the ‘red flags’ we determined were indicative of misleading review behaviour in our methodology. For games apps, this figure was 19%.
| App platform | % of games apps with suspicious reviews | % of health & fitness apps with suspicious reviews |
|---|---|---|
| Apple App Store | 15% | 17% |
| Google Play Store | 22% | 25% |
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Where do app store fake reviews come from?
Our past investigations into fake reviews have revealed a number of fraudulent third parties that sell or promote fake review services, and the usual sources and suspects were also discovered dealing in fake app reviews.
Review brokers
Review brokers sell review services for multiple online platforms – last year we revealed how Facebook, Google and Trustpilot were failing to stop fake reviews generated by brokers.
To make money from an app, developers are reliant on users seeing and downloading it. Apps will go up the rankings based on installs and reviews, and look more reputable if they’ve been downloaded a large number of times. Up votes on reviews manipulate what app store users see - reviews are automatically sorted by ‘helpful’ or ‘relevance’ so positive reviews can be surfaced and negative reviews buried.
This has led to an illegal industry of review brokers for app stores - which we uncovered easily by searching on Google. Some even pay Google to appear at the top of the search results as advertised businesses, while selling fake reviews for Google’s own app store - an unscrupulous triangle.
Others were familiar to us from previous investigations into review brokers, including AppSally which offers review manipulation for lots of platforms. Another site, reviewlancer, claims to have sold nearly 53,000 reviews and exchanged more than 130,000 reviews between apps.
Meta review groups
We’ve uncovered Meta review groups trading in fake reviews for Amazon in multiple previous investigations, and we had no trouble finding them for the App Store and Google Play.
Five star reviews are openly traded on groups with names like ‘Android App ratings and reviews’ or ‘App reviews’. We went undercover as a developer looking for fake reviews for an app, and were approached by several users offering reviews for as little as £1.70 ($2). Using information gathered from going undercover in Facebook groups and through review broker sites we compiled a list of apps that we knew had used fake reviews.
What the app stores told us
We reached out to the platforms involved with our findings.
Apple told us submitting fraudulent reviews is a violation of its license agreement, and developers who attempt to cheat the system may have their apps removed. It said it detected and blocked over 94 million reviews and over 170 million ratings for failing to meet moderation standards in 2021, and an additional 610,000 were removed based on flags from customers and human evaluation.
Google wouldn't provide a statement on the reviews research unless provided with all of Which?'s underlying research. Regarding the Google ads for review brokers – which pay money to Google to appear there – it told us that it had evaluated these and taken appropriate action. It said that it doesn’t allow ads that promote products or services designed to enable dishonest behaviour.
Meta said: ‘Fraudulent and deceptive activity is not allowed on our platforms, including offering or trading fake reviews. We removed a number of the groups for violating our policies. While no enforcement is perfect, we continue to invest in new technologies and methods to protect our users from this kind of content.'
We also reached out to AppSally, which didn't respond, and tried to contact Review Lancer, but the site appears to have been taken down.
Which? is calling for tougher measures on fake reviews
The government is expected to deliver reforms to crack down on fake reviews through its Digital Markets, Competition and Consumer (DMCC) Bill. This should introduce a vital update to consumer protection law to ensure major tech firms take more responsibility for addressing fake reviews that are rife on their platforms.
We want to see higher levels of standards in the apps market, and when it comes to fake reviews we believe that it shouldn’t be up to consumers to wade through misleading information to make an informed choice - whether that’s a business, a product, or an app.
Rocio Concha, Which? Director of Policy and Advocacy, said: 'Apple and Google are failing to prevent fake and suspicious reviews infiltrating their app stores, leaving consumers at huge risk of being misled into downloading apps that have been boosted through unscrupulous tactics.
'Our latest findings illustrate why the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumer Bill is so badly needed in order to tackle fake reviews and the dominance of the tech giants, and finally make consumer protection laws fit for the digital age.'
Five tips for using app stores safely
Apps are big business - according to Statista, the Google Play store had 2.68 million apps in 2022, with Apple's App store housing 3.8 million. With this much competition, apps clearly need to find ways to get noticed – but with issues varying from fake reviews to hidden malware, it's important to take care with every app you download.
- Check app permissions – Apps need to access functions on your phone to work. For example, a plant ID app needs to use your camera to take plant pictures. But do check for excessive permission requests, such as a demand for your precise location when a vague one should do. You can view and deny requested permissions on app store listings; the app might not work if you block them all, though.
- Install the latest updates – Software updates provide protection against the latest threats; they also fix bugs or issues. Many apps aren’t updated regularly, with some not receiving an update for several years. Check on the app store before you download, and if an app hasn’t been updated for six months or more, it might be a sign it should be avoided.
- Sort the reviews – Reviews are automatically sorted by ‘helpfulness’ on the App Store and ‘relevancy’ on Google Play, but we know that these metrics can be manipulated by fake reviewers. This means you may only see positive reviews, while negative ratings are buried. Try sorting in a variety of ways to surface other reviews – by date, topic or star rating, for example.
- Be sceptical of large numbers of five star reviews – If an app has a large number of reviews and a high proportion of them are five stars, ask yourself how likely it is that so many users would have had a faultless experience. If those five-star reviews are gushingly positive, then take them with a pinch of salt. Our research has revealed that well-known apps have a mix of ratings.
- Check the frequency and length of reviews – Our research also suggests you should be wary of too many short reviews. If you see that a lot of them are just a few words in length, it could be a red flag. Also check to see when the reviews landed – if a bunch of them were all placed in a short space of time, that could be a sign of a review surge, driven by fake review brokers.
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