Submission + - Belkin's President Apologizes for Faked Reviews 1
remove office writes: "After I wrote about how Belkin's Amazon.com sales rep Mike Bayard had been paying for fake reviews of his company's products using Mechanical Turk (Slashdot story here), hundreds of readers across the web expressed their umbrage. As a result of the online outcry, Belkin's president Mark Reynoso has issued a statement apologizing and saying that "this is an isolated incident" and that "Belkin does not participate in, nor does it endorse, unethical practices like this." Amazon moved swiftly to remove several reviews on Belkin products it believed were fraudulent, although now fresh evidence of astroturfing has surfaced. Now I'm curious: what steps do Slashdotters think that online retailers can do to protect themselves and their customers from fake reviews?"