Firefox Tests A Great New Security Tool To Expose Fake Product Reviews, Try It Now
With the recent acquisition of Fakespot, Mozilla is looking to improve Firefox's user experience by tracking fake reviews on popular online shopping sites such as Amazon, Best Buy and Walmart. Reports reveal that Mozilla has integrated this capability into Firefox and testing it currently. The feature will become available for everyone starting in November.
Before the acquisition, Fakespot was a 3rd party online service that created a review sifting extension for Firefox (among other browsers). The extension allows shoppers to check which customer reviews are legitimate on supported sites such as Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Shopify, Sephora and Best Buy. The extension also identifies bad sellers on the same supported sites. Fakespot utilizes an artificial intelligence algorithm to detect patterns and similarities in reviews when sniffing out which ones are likely to be the most deceptive.
Now that Mozilla has actively acquired Fakespot for its own uses, Mozilla is apparently injecting Fakespot’s shopping security add-on directly into the Firefox browser natively, enabling everyone to use it without downloading a 3rd party add-on. The new Review Checker feature is being tested right now, and can apparently be enabled if you have the latest Firefox update.
We’re not sure if everyone can access the Review Checker already, but apparently it will pop up on the URL bar if you head to a supported site such as Amazon. Once enabled, the Review Checker will actively filter all reviews and sellers that are displayed on the page. Filtering is done with an A to F grading system, with A representing the most legitimate reviews and F representing the worst reviews — that is, the ones that are most likely a scam.
In typical Mozilla fashion, Review Checker respects users' privacy and will not store a history of your shopping history. It actually makes use of the secure Oblivious HTTP (OHTTP), so it in fact does not even know what sites users are visiting. Reports confirm that the Review Checker will be available to all Firefox users on both desktop and mobile platforms starting on November 21st later this year with Firefox version 120.
