Geeks review coffee makers

History repeats itself, first as farce, then as crime.

(via Froomkin) Geeks review coffee makers.

Customer reviews are becomming increasingly important. Whenever I buy something on Amazon I read the reviews, in fact I go to Amazon mostly because of the reviews.

But accepting unauthenticated inputs creates a security issue. Spoof reviews are funny but they also demonstrate the weakness in the system, the reviews are only as trustworthy as the people who provide them. The problem is made much worse by the fact that one negative comment has a much bigger effect than ten poisitive ones.

Undoubtedly some of the attack reviews on Amazon are posted by competitors, others appear to be posted by disgruntled employees.