Online ratings are increasingly for sale. Research by Malwarebytes Labs has uncovered underground sellers on cybercrime forums who offer five-star reviews on demand and charge to make negative feedback disappear.
The services target Google, Trustpilot, Yelp and mobile app stores. Removing a single review costs $100 to $200 on average, and one seller advertised about $1,100 to remove a negative Airbnb review.
Sellers claim real people post the reviews by hand, and they offer a “non-drop” guarantee that platforms won’t remove them. Buyers pay extra for professionally written text. One operator, TrustForge, claims to have posted more than 10,000 fake reviews.
Artificial intelligence is making the trade easier. Forum users discussed using AI to generate convincing reviews at scale, while residential and mobile proxies help disguise fake activity as genuine consumer traffic.
The real damage falls on consumers. When genuine complaints vanish, patterns of poor quality, refund problems or bad service stay hidden, leaving buyers less informed.
Malwarebytes advises shoppers to read recent and middle-rated reviews, watch for repeated wording or sudden bursts of praise, and check a seller’s contact details and return policy before buying. When every rating is perfect, it may be too good to be true.
