Local couple says their Amazon account was hacked to post reviews

ATLANTA — A local couple says their Amazon account was hacked but the hackers were not trying to steal anything.

Their first thought was that someone went on a shopping spree with their account but when they logged in, they found out someone went on a reviewing spree tossing around five star reviews.

Those golden stars mean a lot when it comes to making buying decisions online especially on Amazon. The company that pioneered online customer reviews.

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"Ten years ago we weren't really buying items online, now we're buying items without an afterthought," Buckhead resident Nic Joseph said.

But lately Amazon has been fighting fake reviews.

Joseph said someone even went to the trouble of hacking his wife's account to post fake five star reviews on products she'd never purchased or even viewed.

"If you can get into our account and then write full-on reviews for an item, who knows what else you can do in that situation," Joseph asked.

It's a growing problem. There are companies that openly hire people to post fake reviews. Amazon has even gone as far as to sue over 1,000 sellers and manufacturers for reviews abuse.

A study by ReviewMeta, an Amazon review checking site, showed that there's been an uptick on suspicious reviews in the past few months.

"What would be the motive behind that? Obviously, the items that were being reviewed would be of benefit to a high review," Joseph said.

Joseph reached out to us because he wasn't satisfied with Amazon's response. He even wrote an email to Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos.

"I got perturbed and emailed who i thought was Jeff directly and I was like Jeff you need to know about this."

In the end, they "sanitized his wife's account" wiping all records of the reviews but his question is -- has your account been hacked for a fake review? And how many purchases have been influenced by a fake?

"I just think we have to do our due diligence to not only protect our wallets but also our purchasing decisions," Joseph said.

Cox Media Group