Bell Canada Fined for Fake App Reviews

Bell Canada Fined for Fake App Reviews

Not to state the obvious, developers, but you probably shouldn't try to bolster your ratings by posting fake reviews of your apps. Because the consequences can be pretty severe if you get caught.
Just look at Bell Canada. The company was slapped with a $1.25 million CAD fine (about $969,330 U.S.) from Canada's Competition Bureau after posting fake reviews in the App Store and Google Play to boost the rankings of its free MyBell Mobile and Virgin My Account apps.
The incident dates back to November 2014, when certain Bell employees were encouraged to post positive reviews and ratings of the apps without disclosing they work for the company. The Bureau determined that these reviews and ratings "created the general impression that they were made by independent and impartial consumers," and temporarily boosted the apps' overall ratings.
The bogus ratings and reviews have since been removed. But in addition to the fine, Bell has agreed to bolster its corporate compliance program with "a specific focus on prohibiting the rating, ranking, or reviewing of apps in app stores by employees and contractors."
Canada's Competition Commissioner John Pecman said Bell "demonstrated leadership to fully resolve the Competition Bureau's concerns in this matter."
"Bell's senior management acted quickly to remove the reviews of the apps that had been posted by its employees and has taken steps to prevent it from happening again," Pecman said in a statement.
For its part, Bell, in a statement sent to PCMag, said it "has never supported astroturfing and took immediate action when this incident first came to our attention last year, including making our policy clear to the entire Bell team."
Meanwhile, Bell isn't the only company accused of rigging app reviews. BlackBerry in 2013 denied posting fake reviews of its BBM for Android app after the effusive nature of some evaluations, as well as similar wording, prompted some to speculate they were not from average BBM users but BlackBerry PR.

It is reminds of the Volkswagon scandal. Obviously, someone will be thrown under the bus.