Earlier this year, Skin care brand Sunday Riley settled with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) who accused the company of posting fake Sephora reviews for 2 years, starting in 2015.
The FTC alleged that in order to boost sales, Sunday Riley staff were asked to write positive reviews of products and dislike negative commentary.
An employee leaked an email from founder and CEO Sunday Riley onto Reddit, ironically titled ‘Credibility is key…’ that went into a lot of detail about how to create a fake Sephora accounts and post “glowing reviews” of their products. It even provided details on how to install a VPN to mask the company’s IP address.
After going viral, the company responded that:
“The simple and official answer to this Reddit post is that yes, this email was sent by a former employee to several members of our company,” said Sunday Riley. “At one point, we did encourage people to post positive reviews at the launch of this product, consistent with their experiences.” She also made the comment that they often used this tactic to address fake negative reviews.
brandsec assist companies who experience fake review attacks or suspect deceptive negative opinion reviews on their brand and positive review on competitors brands.
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