Fake Reviews on Black Friday 2026: How to Shop Amazon Deals Safely

Holiday deals compress decisions. You have a countdown timer, an unfamiliar brand, and a 4.6-star rating, and you have about thirty seconds to decide. That is exactly the situation fake reviews are built for.

Do Fake Reviews Really Spike Around Black Friday?

The best public data comes from Fakespot, a commercial review-analysis company, before it closed. Its report found the share of "C," "D" and "F" review grades roughly doubled from Black Friday through Cyber Monday 2020 compared with typical periods that year (Consumer Goods Technology). Earlier in 2020, Fakespot said about 42% of the 720 million Amazon reviews it assessed from March to September were unreliable, levels it compared to a holiday season (Bloomberg via Digital Commerce 360).

That data is six years old and Fakespot no longer exists to update it, but the incentive hasn't changed: the busiest shopping days reward listings that look best at a glance.

Categories to Watch

In that same report, the Amazon categories with the highest rates of fake reviews were women's apparel, health and personal care, cosmetics, pet supplies, and wireless earbuds. Separately, the UK government study estimated 11–15% fake reviews in the three categories it measured (consumer electronics, home and kitchen, and sports and outdoors), and found well-written fakes had the biggest effect on products over £80 (UK DBT, 2023).

In practice: cheap electronics and accessories, supplements, beauty, and anything from a brand you've never heard of deserve an extra minute.

The Five-Minute Black Friday Checklist

1. Check the deal price, not the "was" price. Use a price history tool to see whether the discount is real.
2. Sort reviews by most recent. A burst of 5-star reviews in the last two weeks is a warning sign right before a sale.
3. Read three 2–4 star reviews. They tell you what actually goes wrong.
4. Confirm the reviews match your variation. Look at the size or color label above each review (why this matters).
5. Run the link through FakeFind. Paste it into the free Amazon review checker and look at the Trust Score and the gap between Amazon's rating and the FakeFind Rating.

Buying Gifts? Two Extra Checks

• Check the return window before you buy, especially from third-party sellers.
• Watch for unexpected packages. If something arrives that nobody ordered, it may be a brushing scam that uses your name for a fake review. The FTC recommends reporting it at ReportFraud.ftc.gov (FTC).

Check Your Whole Cart in a Few Minutes

FakeFind is free with no account, so you can check every item in your cart before the deals end. A Chrome extension and a Firefox add-on that check products without leaving Amazon are coming soon. For the full method, read how to spot fake Amazon reviews.