Trust & Integrity
A review platform is only as valuable as the trust people place in what they read on it.
The moment a fake review goes undetected, a company planting five-star ratings, a competitor submitting negative reviews to damage a rival, a reviewer writing about an experience they never had, the platform stops being useful. It becomes noise. And noise is worse than silence.
Fake reviews are the single biggest threat to what this platform is trying to do. This page explains exactly how we fight them, what systems we have built, what we do when we find them, and what consequences follow.
A fake review is any review that does not reflect a genuine, first-hand experience with the company being reviewed. Specifically:
Company-planted positive reviews
Written by employees, founders, family members, friends, or paid individuals to inflate a company's rating.
Competitor-planted negative reviews
Written by a competing business or their associates to damage a rival's reputation on the platform.
Incentivised reviews
Written in exchange for a discount, free product, cash payment, or any other benefit offered by the company being reviewed.
Fabricated reviews
Written by someone with no genuine connection to or experience with the company.
Recycled reviews
Copied from another platform or written to describe someone else's experience rather than the reviewer's own.
All of the above violate our review policy and are removed when detected, regardless of whether they are positive or negative.
Email verification on every review
No review is published without the reviewer confirming their identity via a one-time code sent to their email address. This is the baseline requirement. No exceptions.
One review per reviewer per company
Our system enforces a strict limit of one review per verified email address per company. Attempting to submit multiple reviews from the same account is automatically blocked at the point of submission.
IP and device monitoring
Every review submission is logged with the reviewer's IP address and device fingerprint. Patterns that suggest a coordinated campaign, multiple reviews submitted for the same company from the same location, device cluster, or IP range within a short window, are automatically held for manual review before publication.
Review velocity monitoring
We track how many reviews any company receives and how quickly. A company that receives an unusual number of reviews in a short period, particularly if those reviews share similar language, rating patterns, or account characteristics, is automatically flagged. The reviews are held while our team investigates.
Reviewer profile credibility scoring
Every reviewer builds a profile over time. An account that has written ten reviews across different companies over several months carries significantly more credibility than an account created last week with a single review. Our system weights reviews accordingly and applies additional scrutiny to new accounts with limited history.
Verified buyer and verified client badges
Reviewers who upload proof of their association with the company, an invoice, agreement, order confirmation, or email correspondence, receive a verified badge. Our team checks this proof before the badge is awarded. Verified reviews carry more weight in a company's overall rating. Unverified reviews are still published but weighted lower.
Business email domain matching
For B2B reviews where a reviewer claims to be a business client, we encourage verification via a business email address that matches the organisation they claim to represent. This significantly raises the barrier for fake B2B reviews.
Prevention stops the obvious attempts. Detection handles the sophisticated ones.
Language and sentiment analysis
Our system analyses review text for patterns associated with fake content, unusually generic language, repetitive phrasing across multiple reviews for the same company, text that mirrors marketing language too closely, or content that appears generated rather than personal. These reviews are flagged automatically for human review.
Network analysis
We analyse relationships between reviewer accounts, shared IP addresses, similar registration patterns, overlapping device fingerprints, to identify coordinated campaigns. When a group of accounts shows these signals and reviews the same company within a concentrated timeframe, the reviews are held and the pattern is investigated before any are published.
Periodic audits
We conduct regular audits of companies with unusually high or low ratings, particularly where the volume or pattern of reviews is inconsistent with the company's known size, age, or industry. These audits are not announced and are not triggered by complaints, they are part of how we maintain the integrity of ratings across the platform.
Community flags
Any user can flag a review they believe is fake. Flags from established accounts with credible review histories carry more investigative weight. Every flag is reviewed by our team within 48 hours.
When a fake review is confirmed
It is removed immediately and permanently. The reviewer's account is banned. All other reviews submitted by that account are audited and potentially removed. If the fake review was submitted as part of a coordinated campaign, every review linked to that campaign is removed.
When a company is found to have orchestrated fake positive reviews
All fake reviews are removed. The company receives a formal warning. A permanent notice is added to their profile indicating that reviews were removed for policy violation. This notice is public and cannot be hidden or removed by the company. Repeated violations result in permanent suspension of their ability to claim or manage their page on the platform.
When a coordinated negative campaign is detected against a company
All fake negative reviews are removed. The accounts responsible are permanently banned. The company is informed of what was found and what action was taken.
No system, however well designed, catches every fake review. Some will get through, particularly well-constructed ones from accounts with established history or real human behaviour patterns. We work continuously to improve detection, but we will not claim perfection we do not have.
What we can promise is this, every credible report of a fake review is investigated seriously. Every confirmed fake review is removed. Every account responsible is banned. And we never leave a fake review in place because investigating it is inconvenient or because we cannot immediately determine who is right.
On any review page
Click the flag icon below the review and describe why you believe it is fake. Be as specific as possible.
By email
Send the review link and your reason for concern to reviews@trustcabbage.com.
Through your dashboard
Claimed companies can use the dispute review option in their dashboard to formally flag a review for investigation.
We acknowledge every report and respond with our finding within 48 hours for urgent flags and 7 days for standard reports.
Fake reviews are not a problem that gets solved once. They evolve as the platform grows and as bad actors find new approaches. Our commitment is not to a fixed set of rules, it is to an ongoing, active effort to keep what people read here as close to the truth as possible.
We commit to publishing an annual transparency report covering the number of reviews removed, accounts banned, and companies warned, so the people who use this platform can see exactly how seriously this commitment is taken.
The value of every genuine review on Trust Cabbage depends on people being able to trust that it is real. We do not take that lightly.
Trust & Integrity
A review platform is only as valuable as the trust people place in what they read on it.
The moment a fake review goes undetected, a company planting five-star ratings, a competitor submitting negative reviews to damage a rival, a reviewer writing about an experience they never had, the platform stops being useful. It becomes noise. And noise is worse than silence.
Fake reviews are the single biggest threat to what this platform is trying to do. This page explains exactly how we fight them, what systems we have built, what we do when we find them, and what consequences follow.
A fake review is any review that does not reflect a genuine, first-hand experience with the company being reviewed. Specifically:
Company-planted positive reviews
Written by employees, founders, family members, friends, or paid individuals to inflate a company's rating.
Competitor-planted negative reviews
Written by a competing business or their associates to damage a rival's reputation on the platform.
Incentivised reviews
Written in exchange for a discount, free product, cash payment, or any other benefit offered by the company being reviewed.
Fabricated reviews
Written by someone with no genuine connection to or experience with the company.
Recycled reviews
Copied from another platform or written to describe someone else's experience rather than the reviewer's own.
All of the above violate our review policy and are removed when detected, regardless of whether they are positive or negative.
Email verification on every review
No review is published without the reviewer confirming their identity via a one-time code sent to their email address. This is the baseline requirement. No exceptions.
One review per reviewer per company
Our system enforces a strict limit of one review per verified email address per company. Attempting to submit multiple reviews from the same account is automatically blocked at the point of submission.
IP and device monitoring
Every review submission is logged with the reviewer's IP address and device fingerprint. Patterns that suggest a coordinated campaign, multiple reviews submitted for the same company from the same location, device cluster, or IP range within a short window, are automatically held for manual review before publication.
Review velocity monitoring
We track how many reviews any company receives and how quickly. A company that receives an unusual number of reviews in a short period, particularly if those reviews share similar language, rating patterns, or account characteristics, is automatically flagged. The reviews are held while our team investigates.
Reviewer profile credibility scoring
Every reviewer builds a profile over time. An account that has written ten reviews across different companies over several months carries significantly more credibility than an account created last week with a single review. Our system weights reviews accordingly and applies additional scrutiny to new accounts with limited history.
Verified buyer and verified client badges
Reviewers who upload proof of their association with the company, an invoice, agreement, order confirmation, or email correspondence, receive a verified badge. Our team checks this proof before the badge is awarded. Verified reviews carry more weight in a company's overall rating. Unverified reviews are still published but weighted lower.
Business email domain matching
For B2B reviews where a reviewer claims to be a business client, we encourage verification via a business email address that matches the organisation they claim to represent. This significantly raises the barrier for fake B2B reviews.
Prevention stops the obvious attempts. Detection handles the sophisticated ones.
Language and sentiment analysis
Our system analyses review text for patterns associated with fake content, unusually generic language, repetitive phrasing across multiple reviews for the same company, text that mirrors marketing language too closely, or content that appears generated rather than personal. These reviews are flagged automatically for human review.
Network analysis
We analyse relationships between reviewer accounts, shared IP addresses, similar registration patterns, overlapping device fingerprints, to identify coordinated campaigns. When a group of accounts shows these signals and reviews the same company within a concentrated timeframe, the reviews are held and the pattern is investigated before any are published.
Periodic audits
We conduct regular audits of companies with unusually high or low ratings, particularly where the volume or pattern of reviews is inconsistent with the company's known size, age, or industry. These audits are not announced and are not triggered by complaints, they are part of how we maintain the integrity of ratings across the platform.
Community flags
Any user can flag a review they believe is fake. Flags from established accounts with credible review histories carry more investigative weight. Every flag is reviewed by our team within 48 hours.
When a fake review is confirmed
It is removed immediately and permanently. The reviewer's account is banned. All other reviews submitted by that account are audited and potentially removed. If the fake review was submitted as part of a coordinated campaign, every review linked to that campaign is removed.
When a company is found to have orchestrated fake positive reviews
All fake reviews are removed. The company receives a formal warning. A permanent notice is added to their profile indicating that reviews were removed for policy violation. This notice is public and cannot be hidden or removed by the company. Repeated violations result in permanent suspension of their ability to claim or manage their page on the platform.
When a coordinated negative campaign is detected against a company
All fake negative reviews are removed. The accounts responsible are permanently banned. The company is informed of what was found and what action was taken.
No system, however well designed, catches every fake review. Some will get through, particularly well-constructed ones from accounts with established history or real human behaviour patterns. We work continuously to improve detection, but we will not claim perfection we do not have.
What we can promise is this, every credible report of a fake review is investigated seriously. Every confirmed fake review is removed. Every account responsible is banned. And we never leave a fake review in place because investigating it is inconvenient or because we cannot immediately determine who is right.
On any review page
Click the flag icon below the review and describe why you believe it is fake. Be as specific as possible.
By email
Send the review link and your reason for concern to reviews@trustcabbage.com.
Through your dashboard
Claimed companies can use the dispute review option in their dashboard to formally flag a review for investigation.
We acknowledge every report and respond with our finding within 48 hours for urgent flags and 7 days for standard reports.
Fake reviews are not a problem that gets solved once. They evolve as the platform grows and as bad actors find new approaches. Our commitment is not to a fixed set of rules, it is to an ongoing, active effort to keep what people read here as close to the truth as possible.
We commit to publishing an annual transparency report covering the number of reviews removed, accounts banned, and companies warned, so the people who use this platform can see exactly how seriously this commitment is taken.
The value of every genuine review on Trust Cabbage depends on people being able to trust that it is real. We do not take that lightly.
