Amazon is increasing action against fake reviews through AI detection, lawsuits, website shutdowns, and government support. It blocked over 250 million suspicious reviews in 2023 and over 275 million in 2024, while FTC rules may result in legal penalties.
Amazonโs actions became more noticeable in 2025. In July, a court ordered more than 75 website domains linked to fake-review activity to be transferred. In October, Amazon and the Better Business Bureau filed another joint lawsuit against companies accused of selling fake reviews.
These actions remain important in 2026 because Amazon is no longer focusing solely on individual reviews. It is now targeting review brokers, websites, social media groups, seller networks, misleading testimonials, and misuse of product listings.
Sellers and brand managers may face serious consequences. These can include deleted reviews, suppressed product listings, account suspension, withheld payments, damage to the brandโs reputation, and possible legal investigation.
In this guide, weโll explain the latest news about Amazonโs fake-review crackdown, how Amazon finds suspicious reviews, Amazonโs current review rules in 2026, the FTC rule, and what honest sellers should do to stay safe.
Why Is Amazon Taking Stronger Action Against Fake Reviews in 2026?
Amazon is trying to stop the full system that allows fake reviews to make money. Its strategy includes automated detection, legal action, cooperation with government authorities, domain seizures, seller penalties, and action against review brokers working outside Amazon.
Recent actions include:
Broker lawsuits: Amazon has filed lawsuits against companies accused of selling fake reviews to Amazon sellers.
Domain transfers: In July 2025, Amazon gained control of more than 75 website domains connected to fake-review services.
AmazonโBBB enforcement: Amazon and the Better Business Bureau filed their second joint lawsuit in October 2025. The lawsuit targeted alleged review networks connected with Skitsolutionbd.com and Amzreview.ca.
Website shutdowns: Amazon stated that its legal actions in 2025 helped shut down more than 100 websites involved in fake reviews and similar scams.
UK commitments: In June 2025, Amazon agreed to take stronger action in response to the UK Competition and Markets Authority. These actions included improving fake-review detection, stopping catalog misuse, and penalizing businesses and reviewers that broke the rules.
Industry cooperation: Amazon continues to work with the Coalition for Trusted Reviews. This group allows major review platforms to share useful information and methods for finding dishonest review businesses.
The October 2025 lawsuit reportedly involved services that claimed to have access to thousands of reviewers in the United States and Canada. However, exact numbers should be used only when directly supported by an official Amazon announcement.
Social media and influencer activity are also part of the problem. Fake-review brokers may find reviewers through private groups, messaging apps, or creator communities. Brands should therefore check not only their Amazon activity but also the work of external agencies, affiliates, influencers, and product-sampling partners. These arrangements must not create hidden, controlled, or misleading testimonials.
How Does Amazon Detect and Prevent Fake Reviews?
Amazon detects suspicious reviews by analyzing patterns and behavior across buyers, sellers, products, accounts, and review networks. It does not decide that a review is fake based on one keyword, star rating, or writing style.
Amazon says its systems study thousands of signals. These may include:
- Connections between accounts and reviewers
- Sign-in and device activity
- Review and purchase history
- Verified Purchase information
- Identity and account-verification details
- Sudden increases in reviews
- Repeated sentences or unusual writing patterns
- Connections between sellers, buyers, brokers, and social media groups
- Changes involving ASINs, variations, and product relationships
Machine-learning tools and network analysis can identify groups of connected accounts that may be difficult to detect when checking reviews individually. Text-analysis tools may also identify repeated, unnatural, or highly organized writing. However, unusual wording alone does not prove that a review is fake.
Amazon uses both automated tools and human investigators. Human review is especially important when a case involves broker networks, refunds, private messaging groups, fake purchases, misleading product variations, or organized attacks against competing listings.
Automated systems are not always perfect. Sometimes, real reviews may be removed by mistake. At the same time, fake reviews, wrong ASIN merges, or review hijacking may stay visible until a seller reports the issue and provides proof.
Brands should regularly check their reviews and catalog activity. They should not assume that Amazonโs systems will automatically find every problem.
Amazonโs Current Fake Review and Incentivized Review Policy
Amazonโs review manipulation policy, as applied in 2026, does not allow sellers to create, buy, influence, or arrange dishonest customer reviews. Sellers cannot offer money, rewards, or other benefits in exchange for a positive, negative, or required review.
Prohibited practices include:
- Paying people to write reviews
- Giving a refund in exchange for a review
- Offering gift cards, discounts, or reimbursements for reviews
- Asking employees, family members, or business partners to review a product
- Asking only happy customers to leave reviews
- Trading reviews with other sellers
- Buying fake Verified Purchase reviews
- Posting or arranging fake negative reviews against competitors
- Using variations or ASIN links to move reviews between unrelated products
- Pressuring customers to edit or delete negative reviews
Sellers can ask customers for honest feedback by using Amazon-approved methods, such as the Request a Review feature. The message must be neutral. It must not reward, pressure, or select customers based on the rating they are likely to leave.
Amazon Vine is another approved option for eligible products. Through this program, selected Vine Voices receive products and write independent reviews.
However, Amazon Vine has eligibility rules, product limits, unit costs, and enrolment fees. Joining the program does not promise positive reviews or a guaranteed number of reviews.
Sellers should be careful with third-party companies that promise guaranteed reviews, five-star ratings, positive feedback, reimbursements, or fast Verified Purchase review growth. These services can create a serious compliance risk.
What Is the FTC Rule and the Law on Fake Reviews?
The FTC Consumer Reviews and Testimonials Rule came into effect on October 21, 2024. Under this rule, the FTC can seek civil penalties when a business knowingly violates rules governing reviews and testimonials.
The rule covers actions such as:
- Creating, buying, or selling reviews that falsely claim to come from a real person or genuine experience
- Using reviews or testimonials from people who do not exist
- Paying for reviews only when the review is positive or negative
- Publishing reviews from employees or other insiders without clearly explaining their connection to the business
- Presenting a company-controlled review website as an independent review source
- Using threats or pressure to stop people from posting negative reviews
- Buying fake social media followers, likes, or other signs of influence for business purposes
AI-written content is not automatically illegal. It becomes a legal problem when it creates a fake person, falsely presents itself as a real customer experience, or is used in a misleading testimonial.
Businesses, agencies, influencers, and review companies may all create legal risks. Brands must clearly explain important relationships. They should never tell an influencer, employee, affiliate, or customer to share an opinion they do not honestly believe.
Civil penalties do not apply automatically in every situation. The result depends on whether the activity breaks the rule, whether the business knew about it, the facts of the case, and the penalty limit at the time of the violation.
Before publishing an exact penalty amount, always check the latest inflation-adjusted maximum directly from the FTC.
How Many Amazon Reviews Are Fake?
There is no reliable public number showing the exact percentage of Amazon reviews that are fake. Different studies use different product categories, dates, data samples, and definitions of suspicious activity. Because of this, their estimates can differ significantly.
Some studies and industry reports have found high levels of suspicious reviews in selected product categories. A few estimates have been close to 40%.
However, this does not prove that 40% of all reviews on Amazon are fake. These numbers usually apply only to specific samples or categories.
What Amazon Reports
- Amazon blocked more than 250 million suspected fake reviews in 2023.
- Amazon reported blocking more than 275 million suspected fake reviews in 2024.
- Amazon said that more than 99% of products in its store had only genuine reviews during the reporting period.
The blocked-review numbers refer to suspicious reviews that Amazonโs systems blocked. They do not mean that all these reviews were published. They also do not show the percentage of currently visible reviews that are fake.
For sellers, the main lesson is simple: review manipulation happens on a large enough scale that regular monitoring is necessary.
Brands should watch for sudden increases in reviews, unusual language, fake negative reviews, review hijacking, ASIN merges, and unexpected changes to product variations.
What Does Amazonโs Fake Review Crackdown Mean for Sellers?
Amazonโs crackdown means that review compliance is now an important part of maintaining a healthy seller account.
Sellers involved in review manipulation may face deleted reviews, suppressed listings, account suspension, funds withholding, permanent selling bans, reputational damage, and legal investigation.
Honest brands can also face problems. Amazonโs automated systems may remove genuine reviews. Competitors may post fake negative reviews. Reviews may also move between unrelated products due to incorrect ASIN merges, variation misuse, or review hijacking.
What Sellers Should Do
- Audit every review source. Check the methods used by employees, agencies, customer service teams, influencers, affiliates, and product-sampling partners.
- Stop risky incentives. Remove any process that gives refunds, reimbursements, discounts, gift cards, free products, or special treatment in exchange for a review.
- Improve listing accuracy. Use clear images, correct dimensions, honest claims, complete instructions, and accurate details on variations. This can reduce complaints caused by customers receiving something different from what they expected.
- Use approved tools. Use Amazonโs Request a Review feature. Eligible sellers may also use Amazon Vine.
- Monitor reviews and catalog activity. Look for sudden rating changes, large increases in reviews, repeated wording, deleted reviews, parent-child changes, ASIN merges, and reviews that describe a different product.
- Preserve evidence. Save review links, visible reviewer names, dates, screenshots, order patterns, support case numbers, variation history, ASIN changes, and any possible link to a review broker or competitor.
- Escalate in stages. Report an individual review through the review page when the reporting option is available. For organized review abuse, open a Seller Support or Account Health case. Provide clear evidence and request that the case be sent to the team responsible for review or catalog abuse.
- Document false positives. When Amazon removes genuine reviews, keep the full case history. Do not ask customers to post the review again or change what they wrote. Clearly explain why the review activity was legitimate and provide only the information Amazon is allowed to examine.
Amazonโs review enforcement system is not perfect. Regular monitoring and proper records can help honest sellers respond when an automated decision, catalog mistake, or competitorโs actions affect their listings.
Want to check whether reviews on a listing may be fake? Read SalesDuoโs guide on how to spot fake Amazon reviews. That guide explains how to identify suspicious reviews. This article focuses on Amazonโs enforcement actions, review policies, legal rules, and risks for sellers.
Conclusion: Review Compliance Is Now an Account-Health Requirement
Amazon is making fake-review enforcement much harder to ignore. Lawsuits against brokers, automated detection systems, website shutdowns, government rules, and catalog-abuse controls mean that fake reviews can damage much more than a productโs star rating.
Sellers should focus on real customer experiences, accurate product listings, neutral review requests, Amazon-approved programs, and strong evidence when abuse happens.
These steps can protect account health, build customer trust, and support steady sales and long-term marketplace growth.
Book a 1:1 growth call with SalesDuo.
FAQs
Are fake Amazon reviews illegal?
Fake or seriously misleading reviews may break the FTC Consumer Reviews and Testimonials Rule. The rule covers made-up reviews, reviewers who do not exist, undisclosed employee or insider reviews, incentives based on positive or negative opinions, fake social media activity, and certain methods used to hide negative reviews.
Can sellers be fined for fake reviews?
Businesses may face civil penalties for knowingly violating the FTC rule. Whether a penalty applies depends on the activity, the knowledge requirement, available proof, and the penalty limit in effect at the time.
Amazon may also remove reviews, suppress listings, suspend accounts, or permanently ban sellers.
What is Amazonโs policy on incentivized reviews?
Amazon does not allow sellers to offer refunds, payments, gift cards, discounts, free products, or other rewards in exchange for reviews that require an opinion.
Amazon Vine is allowed for eligible products because Amazon controls the program and Vine reviewers are free to leave either positive or negative feedback.
What happens when Amazon catches a seller buying reviews?
Amazon may remove the reviews, restrict the product listing, suspend the seller account, hold payments, or permanently ban the seller.
Serious or organized review manipulation may also result in lawsuits or government investigation.
How do I report fake reviews on Amazon?
Customers can use the reporting option shown next to an individual review when available.
Sellers dealing with organized review abuse should open a Seller Support or Account Health case. They should provide review links, dates, screenshots, ASIN and variation changes, order patterns, previous case numbers, and any evidence connecting the activity to a review broker or competitor.
About the Author:
Meet Paulami Karmakar, an Amazon Content Expert, who specializes in strategizing and crafting powerful SEO content that enhances product visibility, enriches customer experience, and boosts sales on Amazon and Walmart across continents. With a passion for innovation and a commitment to excellence, Paulami consistently creates customized strategies that achieve measurable success. Outside of her work, she finds joy in painting, handicrafts, yoga, and music.
