Beware five-star reviews: the scam write-ups that seek to trap online shoppers

Over-the-top praise for an item should ring alarm bells, with fake feedback generated by AI, bots and humans on a mass scale

You’re doing a spot of online Christmas shopping and see an air fryer that is competitively priced. You don’t recognise the brand, but the reviews are fantastic – five-star raves that say things such as “this product changed my life” and “this is the greatest air fryer ever”.

You buy it, but when it arrives it is clearly cheap and poor quality, and possibly dangerous, too.