22 December 2024 , 16:11
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A helpless London restaurant was bombarded by fake negative reviews from an AI mafia gang to extort £10,000 - leaving experts warning UK businesses pray you’re not next.
Nikolas Lemmel says his online reputation firm Maximatic Media were called in by a London restaurant - who do not wish to be named - when they found their business targeted by online gangsters. He claims a shell-shocked London restaurant owner woke to find a barrage of one-star reviews had dragged her Google rating from 4.9 to 2.3 virtually overnight.
Nikolas says the scathing reviews accused the independent eatery as being racist, giving guests food poisoning and offering all-round poor service. The owner then received an anonymous email from the review-bombing mafia to claim responsibility and demand £10,000 in cryptocurrency Bitcoin. He explains the attackers were using AI-powered bot farms across the world to dupe Google into thinking they were legitimate customers writing reviews from London on a smartphone.
Maximatic Media worked with Google to remove the fake reviews and built a digital strategy that encouraged loyal customers to write positive ones. It’s claimed they restored the restaurant’s Google profile to a 4.8-star rating within a month and the establishment hasn’t been contacted by the gang since. Google claim they use a combination of technology, expert analysts, and community reports to tackle fraudulent content and insist perpetrators can face account suspension and even legal action.
Nikolas says he’s witnessing a scary rise in automated attacks that put livelihoods in limbo. However he warned there isn’t much you can do to stop this kind of attack and internet users should pray it doesn’t happen to them. Nikolas said: “Usually we see competitors attempting to decrease the standing of a business within the eyes of a local customer base but this was an outside party. They were trying to extort money to remove these reviews.
“They were like a review-bombing mafia. They were using bot farms to mask the IP address of the accounts and emulate a mobile device that was in the area of the restaurant. Usually if someone was to leave a review from a different country then it would be easy to get it removed but in this case it was a lot more difficult. She was extremely thankful that we got all of those reviews down and she didn’t succumb to the extortion attempt.
“There weren’t many precautions she could have taken to stop the review-bombing mafia from demolishing her rating. There isn’t much you can do other than pray you don’t become a victim of this sort of attempt. It’s scary. Unless your business is within the IT field this is above a lot of people’s pay grades and that’s why it’s hard to work out where it’s coming from or how to stop it. It’s important people reach out to specialists in these sorts of situations because it’s a tailored approach depending on what’s happening.”
If you see a business get hundreds of reviews within seconds then that’s a very easy tell-tale sign that it’s probably being targeted by an automated attack. Maximatic Media was founded in 2020 to help small businesses manage their online reputation through targeted PR strategies. Nikolas says they’ve recently ramped up their crisis-management work to combat online villains abusing modern technology to target businesses. He says the AI mafia continued to flood the restaurant with negative reviews while they worked with Google to remove them but over time they decreased.
The owner was encouraged to post a statement on social media outlining what had happened and to contact loyal customers with incentives to support her during the difficult time. New positive reviews helped turn the tide against the attackers and restore the restaurant’s reputation for the grateful owner. Nikolas believes many platforms and websites don’t have the capabilities to deal with complex AI attacks yet and fears the attacks are becoming more complex.
Nikolas said: “We’ve seen a rise of these sorts of situations where businesses are repeatedly facing these risks of having their livelihoods put into this limbo zone. It is something many websites and platforms are working on making improvements in but sadly the attacks are also becoming increasingly complex and advanced too so it’s a never-ending game of catch-up.”
A spokesperson for Google said: Our policies clearly state reviews must be based on real experiences and information, and we use a combination of technology, expert analysts, and community reports to monitor for fraudulent content. When we find scammers trying to mislead people, we take action ranging from content removal to account suspension and even litigation.