[continued from part 1]
Airbnb Fakes
In Airbnb the fake account situation is quite interesting as well. Despite having a strong verification process, there can still many fake listings and reviews be found on Airbnb. Usually, due to some characteristics they can be identified rather easily though. For example, if the price offered (compared to similar listings) is radically different, then looking closely at the reviews might give you a good feeling of whether or not this listing is real. However, most of the information that might help to identify if there is a fake account are not accessible to the user. For example, if the user gained all his reviews from different accounts who still have the same PayPal account or credit card. Or even the same IP address! Further, the reviews of that hosts are somehow unusual in terms of being extraordinarily short or not at all personal. One other sign might be if the booking is wrapped up entirely without even one message being exchanged between the parties. That is pretty unusual for Airbnb users and should make you rethink the situation and to get in touch with the host. Also always a good call: a reverse picture google search. Just save the pictures and let google find you the other sites that picture is listed on. That way if you find other (unrelated) sources, the chance of having hit a fake account is really high.
Tinder Fakes
Yes. Sometimes it is cruel but even on tinder you will find loads of fake users. The accounts might be linked to a fake Facebook account, ask you to fill in forms or send you links to click on in order to be redirected to spam content. Here, since the first contact is only based on the picture, it is quite difficult to identify a fake account upfront. After a while, if both tinderers invest time and start having a conversation, you will know pretty fast if this is a spamming account or a real one. Based on the picture exclusively, it might be difficult to say. But let’s face it: if the picture looks very unusually inviting the chances of it being fake are not very low ;-)… Just make sure to never fill out a form with your contact data or something like that when asked in a tinder chat. Because if you do you can be sure to receive not too little spam.
Amazon Fakes (reviews)
On Amazon the classical “fake accounts”-term is rather referring to authors of fake reviews than actually scamming-accounts who are not sending out the product for example. The incentive for fake reviews here are very obvious: while a positive (but fake) five star review might lead to customers trusting the pretending happy customer and buy the product, while a bad review could prevent them to do so. Hence, often friends or family –and sometimes even paid reviewers – provide fake reviews as a marketing tool. However, this is quite a dangerous call. If the review is not very authentic that could be very counterproductive. But how can you spot a fake account? Some useful advices are:
1) consider the length of the review – if the author is a fake reviewer he will most probably just want to add five (or one) stars and leave again,
2) check the tone of the review – hugely exaggerating reviews where the product is “just the best thing ever!” or “exactly what I needed my whole life – finally it is here!” or further very outstanding reviews should be considered carefully. It is likely that there is someone trying to put this product in a better marketing position. If you like a product, you like and at you can be very satisfied. But usually, adding up lots of superlatives to describe the AMAZINGNESS of the product might be doubtful… Same thing goes when the product seems to be the “WORST THING EVER!!” and “a TOTAL RIP OFF” without mentioning any reasons for that. And when the reason is stated, to some further research online to see if someone else have had this problem as well. That might make the point more legit. Also when considering tone and language of the review, see if the review is using very generic words such as “the product” – instead of its name – or “it is worth the money” – instead of mentioning the price and so on.
3) Check to see if the user has other reviews on amazon. If it is indeed a fake account it most likely does not have written a lot of reviews. Also when you see the other reviews you can get a feeling of how that person is reviewing in general and get a better feeling of identifying the value of the review.
Well, as can be seen from the above examples, fake accounts might have an impact but can also be identified with some time and attention.