From five stars to fines: the risks of fake reviews in the UK
14 July 2025
What you need to know
- New prohibitions on fake reviews came into force on 6 April 2025, under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (DMCC Act).
- The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has indicated that businesses will be granted a three-month grace period. During this period, the CMA intends to support businesses to achieve compliance and uplift existing processes, rather than taking enforcement action. The CMA has commenced a sweep of review platforms to identify potential non-compliance.
- Enforcement action is expected to follow later this year, under the CMA's new powers to impose fines of up to 10% of a company's global turnover for breaches of consumer protection law.
- The new prohibitions apply to those hosting and publishing reviews or consumer review information.
- The CMA has published specific guidance on the new prohibitions (Fake Reviews: CMA208) (Guidance) and recent undertakings accepted by the CMA also provide further insight into what it considers to be best practice.
What you need to do
- Conduct a risk assessment of your business's exposure to fake reviews, concealed incentivised reviews and misleading review information.
- Carefully review your existing policies, and consider developing new tailored policies and procedures.
- Take steps to ensure that your business is compliant with the obligation to take reasonable and proportionate steps to prevent the publication of, and remove from publication, fake reviews, concealed incentivised reviews and misleading review information.
What are the new prohibitions?
The new prohibitions relate to both the submission or commissioning of reviews, and the publication of reviews. Specifically, they apply to any person or business that:
- submits or commissions fake reviews or concealed incentivised reviews (collectively, Banned Reviews);
- publishes Banned Reviews or consumer review information in a misleading way;
- publishes Banned Reviews or consumer review information without taking reasonable and proportionate steps to prevent or remove such reviews or information; and
- offers services to submit, commission or publish Banned Reviews or misleading consumer review information (or to facilitate such conduct).
Notably, conduct that breaches these prohibitions is automatically unfair and illegal; regulators are not required to establish that the behaviour affected consumer decisions.
In this briefing, we will explain:
- what is meant by fake reviews;
- who will be caught by the new prohibitions; and
- what you need to know about, and how you can ensure you are compliant with, each of the new prohibitions.
What is meant by "fake reviews"?
The prohibitions apply to three types of review information:
| Fake reviews | A fake review is any review that is not based on a person's genuine experience. |
| Fake reviews can be positive or negative. | |
| Fake reviews can include reviews by a person who has not actually used the trader, product, or service. | |
| Fake reviews can include reviews created by AI or bought from companies that sell fake reviews (brokers). | |
| Fake reviews can include reviews about a different, but similar, product or service. | |
| Concealed incentivised reviews | A concealed incentivised review is one where the reviewer has been given something in return for their review, but this is not clearly disclosed. |
| Incentives can be monetary or non-monetary, and could include commissions, discounts, vouchers, complimentary products, complimentary stays, or event invitations. | |
| Incentives might be offered before a review is submitted (to encourage a review) or after (to persuade someone to change or remove a negative review). | |
| The DMCC Act does not prohibit the publication of incentivised reviews, however, it imposes additional obligations on traders to ensure that consumers can easily identify if an incentive has been offered. | |
| Consumer review information | Consumer review information is information that is derived from reviews, such as overall ratings or review counts. |
| Overall ratings could include numerical values, star ratings, other visual representations or other measures of review score (e.g. Bad, Average, Excellent). |
Who will be caught by the new prohibitions?
| Traders | Businesses that publish reviews or review information, either online or in hard copy. |
| Professional reviewers. | |
| Journalists. | |
| Content creators, including bloggers, influencers, online streamers and celebrities. | |
| Marketing companies. | |
| Other individuals acting on behalf of traders. | |
| Publishers | Platforms such as search engines, digital marketplaces and social media. |
| Specialist review sites. | |
| Trader or business recommendation platforms. | |
| Retailers. | |
| Booking agents. | |
| Brokers | Businesses that procure Banned Reviews for traders, for example by offering incentives to reviewers or generating fake reviews using AI chatbots. |
| Online platforms or social media sites that know their services are being used to sell fake reviews or misleading review information. |
What do you need to know about the new prohibitions?
Submitting or commissioning a review
Submitting, or commissioning another person to submit or write, a Banned Review is now prohibited under the DMCC Act.
- Submitting a review means supplying it with a view to publication and includes providing reviews to a publisher for publication or inclusion in marketing materials or a reviewer publishing a review themselves.
- Commissioning a review involves engaging a third party to submit a Banned Review.
When will the publication of a review be misleading?
Misleading publication is likely to involve the omission of important information, making relevant information hard to see or access, or presenting or highlighting information in a misleading way. The CMA's Guidance provides examples of how this might occur in relation to both consumer reviews and consumer review information.
| Publishing consumer reviews in a misleading way | Publishing consumer review information in a misleading way |
| Only publishing positive reviews and not publishing negative ones. | Displaying overall ratings that have not been adjusted to remove the impact of fake reviews. |
| Making positive reviews more prominent than negative ones. | Displaying overall ratings that do not accurately represent aggregate reviews because, for example, negative reviews have been suppressed. |
| Editing reviews to remove negative aspects or highlight positive aspects. | Allowing rankings to be determined based on commissions paid by traders. |
| Actively trying to stop customers from leaving negative reviews. This could include disabling the option to leave reviews, only inviting customers who have had a positive experience to leave a review, threatening or pressuring customers not to leave negative reviews or to amend negative reviews, offering incentives (such as refunds or discounts) to customers to remove or amend negative reviews or using contract terms to prevent customers from publishing negative feedback or negative reviews. | |
| Failing to disclose that a reviewer has been offered an incentive, or has financial/commercial links to the trader or business (such as being an employee or shareholder). | |
| Publishing reviews for one product on the page for a different product, or combining reviews for different products if there are differences between the products that are likely to lead to a different customer experience. | |
| Failing to remove or label outdated reviews that no longer reflect customer experience with the trader, product or service. |
What are publishers required to do in relation to Banned Reviews?
The DMCC Act imposes a positive obligation on publishers to take reasonable and proportionate steps to:
- prevent Banned Reviews and false or misleading consumer review information from being published; and
- remove Banned Reviews and false or misleading consumer review information that has already been published.
The CMA's Guidance explains what this obligation is likely to require in practice. In particular, it states that the minimum requirements are that businesses (i) develop a policy, (ii) conduct a risk assessment, and (iii) regularly evaluate the effectiveness of processes adopted.
Develop and publish a policy
The policy should explain:
- how you prevent and remove Banned Reviews, and false or misleading review information;
- how you handle incentivised reviews, including whether you allow such reviews to be published and if so, how you will disclose if an incentive has been given; and
- the options available to a dissatisfied consumer, such as leaving a review or lodging a complaint. You must be careful not to discourage consumers from leaving reviews.
Carry out a risk assessment
- You should assess the risk that Banned Reviews or false or misleading review information could appear on your platform / media.
- A risk assessment could be based on the findings of technology solutions (used to identify Banned Reviews or misleading review information), third party reports or internal investigations.
- After the relevant risks are identified, you should evaluate the effectiveness of existing controls designed to mitigate those risks. Two key factors to consider are: (i) the completeness of coverage across all identified scenarios and channels, and (ii) the effectiveness of the controls in accurately identifying potential issues. Where gaps are identified, you may have to develop processes to detect, investigate and rectify Banned Reviews and false or misleading review information. By way of example, Amazon and Google have recently provided undertakings to the CMA committing to adopt mitigation measures within 90 days of risks being identified (where possible).
You should consider how frequently a revised risk assessment is necessary. This will depend on the nature of your business, the types of risks identified, the source of reviews, and the effectiveness of steps taken to date. For example, in undertakings agreed with the CMA, Amazon committed to conduct regular risk assessments throughout the year and Google committed to do so on an annual basis.
Evaluate effectiveness
- Continuous evaluation of process effectiveness is essential, and any identified gaps should be addressed promptly. Effective monitoring and thorough root cause analysis are key enablers to achieve this.
- If you identify a high number of Banned Reviews or false or misleading review information, this could indicate that the processes which are in place to prevent such issues need to be strengthened.
What businesses should do now
Businesses should take a proactive approach to managing consumer reviews. We have set out some potential practical steps to help guide your risk-based action plan.
Map the customer journey:
- Develop an understanding of where customers might encounter Banned Reviews or misleading consumer review information.
- Once you have identified the potential risk areas, proactively implement policies, procedures and safeguards to mitigate those risks.
How to limit and detect fake reviews:
- Maintain a robust and dynamic policy by conducting regular reviews and updating the policy to address emerging technologies and evolving risks (including AI related risk).
- Restrict access permissions to limit who can submit a review. This might involve requiring proof that the reviewer has used the product or service (even if it was received as a gift) before they can submit a review.
- Collect and analyse data on review activity to spot unusual patterns (either manually, using a software solution or potentially AI tools). Amazon and Google have both committed to review submission history and user profiles in order to detect fake review activity.
- Run regular training to enable your employees to recognise fake reviews or suspicious trends.
- Provide a clear and easy way for consumers and third parties to report suspicious reviews.
Address the risks related to concealed incentivised reviews:
- Review whether you have any existing arrangements with marketing agencies, brand partners or content creators such as bloggers, influencers, online streamers, celebrities or social media personalities which include any monetary or non-monetary incentives for reviews.
- Ensure that any reviews resulting from incentives (such as discounts, gifts, or complimentary services) are accompanied by clear and prominent disclosures.
- Implement a process to check that your policy on incentivised reviews is being followed. Establish a clear procedure for addressing any breaches, including steps for investigating and rectifying non-compliance.
- Adopt proactive measures to ensure that reviews accurately reflect the reviewer's genuine experience and disclosures are made appropriately. The table below contains additional guidance on how to achieve a best practice approach.
| Best practice tips | Practices to avoid |
| Use clear labels to disclose that the content is an ad, or linked to a paid partnership. This might involve using labels like "Ad", "Advert", or "Advertising". | Avoid using unclear or ambiguous terms such as #gift, #sponsored, #spon, #affiliate, #collab, #PRTrip, or ‘made possible by’. Do not simply name the brand without disclosing that the content is an advertisement, or that an incentive has been offered. |
Make sure disclosures are easy to see and understand. Check the colours and backgrounds used to ensure disclosures are not obscured. | Do not hide disclosures in small print, at the end of a video promotion, or behind a "see more" link. |
| Ensure that each post or review is clearly labelled if an incentive has been offered. | Avoid relying on generic catch-all disclosures on a social media bio or website home page. |
| Consider requiring reviewers to make clear and prominent disclosures for any incentivised reviews before publishing them. | Do not allow reviewers to bypass or dismiss disclosure prompts. |
Assess the risks related to presentation of consumer review information:
- Develop a clear methodology for calculating overall ratings and rankings, which clearly explains the exact data points used in any calculations.
- Regularly review the methodology to ensure the overall rating remains a reliable and accurate indicator of customer reviews.
- Make sure overall ratings are adjusted as necessary: for example, if you identify Banned Reviews or other misleading reviews, or if earlier reviews have become outdated and are no longer accurate reflections of consumer experience. Adjustments could be made by ensuring the overall rating does not take into account Banned Reviews, or assigns a different weighting to suspicious reviews pending investigation. Any adjustments will require a careful approach to ensure that overall ratings remain an accurate and reliable indicator which consumers can rely on.
- Businesses which endorse particular traders or products should also be mindful of the impact of fake reviews to ensure endorsements are not misleading. In the undertaking offered by Amazon, it has committed to adjust its "Amazon Choice" endorsement to account for fake reviews where required.
- Consider whether review information may impact other aspects of your business. By way of example, the Amazon undertaking includes commitments to reduce the impact of fake reviews on search result rankings.
Investigating suspected Banned Reviews or potentially misleading review information:
- Establish a clear process or criteria for escalating unusual trends, suspicious reviews and consumer or third-party reports for further investigation internally. The Amazon and Google undertakings include commitments to investigate all reports made by one of the specified regulatory bodies, including the CMA and other national trading standards authorities.
- Make sure investigations are carried out promptly to reduce the risk of misleading information remaining online, and to ensure you can publish any genuine reviews quickly.
- Decide whether you will remove reviews under investigation from publication, or add a label or disclaimer explaining that the review is being checked.
Taking action:
- Consider whether you will impose sanctions if you identify Banned Reviews.
- The Amazon and Google undertakings provide examples of the types of sanctions which could be imposed. These include publishing a warning alert on a business's website to indicate that it has been involved in fake review activity, preventing users / businesses which have submitted, commissioned or published Banned Reviews from using your site / platform, preventing those users from submitting reviews and/or deleting all reviews submitted by those users. The Google undertaking also provides an example of how these sanctions could be applied in a tiered model.
- Additional steps may also be required to identify any affiliated accounts to ensure the same user / business cannot circumvent sanctions by using an alternative account to submit or publish Banned Reviews.
Want to know more?
- New era for consumer enforcement in the UK, 7 April 2025 (https://www.ashurst.com/en/insights/new-era-for-consumer-enforcement-in-the-uk/), for a summary of the consumer law changes introduced by the DMCC Act.
Additional author: Mashal Kadri, Director, Risk Advisory
