Walt Kane

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Nov 9, 2023, 8:00 AM

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Updated

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With the holidays and Black Friday coming up, you're probably going to be doing a lot more shopping online in the coming weeks. But do you trust online reviews? A Kane In Your Corner investigation finds maybe you shouldn't.

An investigation by News 12's senior investigative reporter Walt Kane found some online reviews were taken word-for-word from reviews given to other moving companies over the past 12 years.

Kay Dean, an online review fraud investigator, says fake reviews makes it very unfair for the honest businesses who have to “compete in this environment where cheating is essentially rewarded.”

"A lot of people are putting blind trust in these tech companies and review platforms that their algorithms are providing them with reliable information. And as I show over and over again, in my research and on my channel, they're not,” Dean said.