How Google wants to stop the ‘one-star’ review scam from India

Quite often before people want to try a new establishment — restaurant, salon, among others — they tend to read the reviews of it. Google encourages users to post reviews of businesses on Maps, Search, and even YouTube, so that others can get an idea of how the place might be. A bad review can be bad news for a business and the ‘rating’ does fall considerably. A report by The New York Times reveals how scammers — mostly from India — give one-star reviews to businesses and then indulge in extortion to remove those reviews.
How does the one-star review scam work?
The report by The New York Times reveals that many of these one-star reviews come from India. What the scammers do is post negative reviews of establishments and then ask for a Google Play Gift card to get the review off. If their ‘demand’ isn’t met, they threaten to post more negative reviews.
The report quotes the ‘threat’, which is sent via email. One of the emails was quoted in the New York Times report and reads like this: “We sincerely apologise for our actions, and would not want to harm your business but we have no other choice. The fact is that we live in India and see how other way to survive.”