Re:Still using fake reviewers to sell lousy books? (Score 2, Interesting)

Like "Dragon Dinasour" above, I had my negative review of Hack Attacks Revealed and Hack Attacks Denied purged from Amazon's lists twice. I suspected something was up, and so I kept track of the reviews for three months. Helevius is right on - someone (and who's the most likely suspect) is spamming Amazon with good reviews and having the bad ones removed. Amazon's goal is to sell books, so they seem to happily remove bad reviews for on reason.

For a bit over two months I tracked the reviews at Amazon (October 3 - Dec 10) and found the following:

• Every time a negative review was posted, three to five 5 star reviews were posted in the next two days. This effectively removed the negative review from the first page of reviews.

• Negative reviews were purged from the list within a week 70% of the time. Another 5% were purged within the following week, and after that messages tended to stay around.

• Positive reviews were also purged, at a rate of 5% the first two weeks, seldom thereafter.

• Any review with 3 or less stars had a purge likelyhood of 95% within the first two weeks.

• On separate occasions there were 5-star reviews that were clearly fake because:
  • The same review was posted on the same day by different names

  • The same review was posted days later by different names

  • Reviews were posted that simply copied the front or back cover text of the book

  • Posts by non-existant people claiming to know Chrillo's computer prowess

• And some that were likely fake but not guarenteed:
  • Posts to HAR and HAD that had the exact same text but changed the book title, even though the two books were very different.

  • Reviewers who gave HAR praise and gave 1 star reviews to multiple HAR competitors using the same text that could have applied to any book, even those not related to security at all.

  • Multiple reviews in one day by different names that all lived in the same city (probably an error in the review-spamming script)

Read that again - 95% of the negative reviews were removed from the Amazon reviews. Can you really trust what's up there now? Do you want to buy a book by an author who astroturfs, rather than taking the time to write something good?

Yes, I have a copy of the Second edition. I read every page. I politely dissagree with anyone in this forum who says some miraculous change has occured. (And I suspect several are Chirllo in disguise.) HAR is still full of errors, repetition, unneeded screen shots, age old hacks, and can't explain what any of these technologies do and how you can use them either as a white or black hat. Go out and buy any other hacking book and you're better off.

And yes, I wrote a well worded review for Amazon, and they took it off the site, no explanation available.