Brushing, Fake Reviews

My wife has been receiving some super cheap Chinese trinkets that look like Christmas ornaments…directly from China. The address numbers are off but the local post office corrects and delivers them. Apparently this is called brushing, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brushing_(e-commerce)?fbclid=IwAR3o2E7cZLfeiz-ARFrxEzPHpeJ5kLmziZsfL_YaooO0zbmexIdnWirbvKk Don’t think it is an actual security issue but guess they do this to create fake reviews. What a world we live in!

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I don’t see how this can be easily combated. The people getting those packages would really need to be the front line, and they just really don’t care, for the most part.

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I agree, it is probably impossible to control this. Best is to just throw the junk away.

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I have a friend that’s also been the victim of this for several months. He’s constantly getting Amazon packages of cheap crap from China. Some stuff is broken and doesn’t work at all and he worries about some of the things like phone chargers that might either zap his phone or start a fire. Occasionally there’s something that’s okay, but for the most part it’s a lot of garbage he has to deal with. He can’t get them to stop and Amazon says they can’t do anything about it because it’s sent as a “gift”. They’re not sent from his account and he hasn’t been charged. He suspects they just picked his address at random.

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It could be that they see the persons account and take note of the number of reviews they have handed out.

No, this is someone who is trying to get their products (or a client’s products) reviewed and get that particular account flagged as a top reviewer. They buy the product so the review holds more weight…and then they ship it to a random US address (which happens to be my friend’s house) because US buyers on the US Amazon site also carry more weight for reviews. The person is in China, so it’s not like they can ship it to themselves.

My friend hasn’t actually reviewed anything himself nor is it his account doing the reviewing. They’re only using his mailing address, not his account, credit card, reviewer status, name, profile, or anything…only shipping this crap to him.

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I have read many stories about this before. Crazy.

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